


Dreammaker, You Heartbreaker

by TheSubtextMachine



Category: IT (2017)
Genre: Alcohol, Bev is the casting agent and Bill is the fiancé who’s name i forget?, Breakfast at Tiffany’s AU, M/M, Me trying experimental stuff with my writing, Mike is doc golightly, Nightmares, Richie is a Free Spirit™, Slow-ish burn, angst like woah, eddie is Paul and Richie is Holly, party scene, some crying goes down in this tbh, stan is discussed at length, will add more tags as story progresses
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-26
Updated: 2019-02-04
Packaged: 2019-02-21 21:55:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 22,487
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13152801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSubtextMachine/pseuds/TheSubtextMachine
Summary: Inspired by @takealottodragmeawayfromreddie and their idea for a Breakfast at a Tiffany's AU.Eddie Kapsbrak is a writer, being supported financially by his ever-worried mother. He's dissatisfied with his life, but he finds something to love about his world when Richie, his eccentric neighbor, becomes a part of it. He experiences love and loss and then maybe love again as he discovers that Richie may be just as lost as he is, if not more.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I posted a preview of this on my IT sideblog @kapsbrakclapsback, and I will post these chapters there too!

The lost man moves with a purpose, walking with a fashionable black evening coat paired with a coffee to-go and a Danish, the oil of the pastry leaving dark yellow-gray stains on the white paper bag. Sunglasses stand on the bridge of his nose, and no passerby can read his story from his eyes because of them. The city feels awfully tall as it surrounds him, but as big as the world around him is, he can still hear the soft taps that his slightly worn but high end shoes make on the pavement below him.

Maybe he’s been walking for hours, maybe minutes. We don’t know, and it’s not even clears if he knows. Nonetheless, he stops, sure in his halted step as he makes a sharp turn to face the large, shiny shop window. He takes a sip of the bitter coffee and just lets himself look.

Everything about it gleams. Tiffany's was like heaven as imagined through children's books, full of sparkle and shine. The shine itself takes on a new, indecipherable meaning in the kind light of the 7 am rising sun. 

He takes a bite of his Danish and lets his head tilt in fascination, Let’s his concealed eyes scatter about the magic charm of it all. He wonders for a second if he should take the glasses off, but remembers that his hands are full and decides that he probably couldn’t comprehend Tiffany's if he got to view it in its unshaded glory.

This is god, he thinks. This is salvation, this is heaven. Nothing bad can happen here. 

He gives himself a few more moments to heal, to let the power of Tiffany's and all of its glittering diamonds seep into his soul. Then, he pulls his eyes away from it, and begins the walk to his apartment building, falling into step with the collage of New Yorkers until he is more part of the pavement than he is an individual.

——

When Eddie got out of his impossibly bright yellow taxi and pulled out his suitcase (the rest of the boxes were to come later, he'd been told), he took a moment to stand on the sidewalk and just look.

He gazed at the way that the city popped and whirred to life around him, like some grey-brown toy store. Everything around him was tall, com the buildings to the pedestrians, but Eddie had been short for a long enough time to know that the feeling was to be expected in most new places. People of all types passed him as he let his gaze travel across every surface. Despite the circumstances, he felt freedom burn in his throat, felt it sear behind his eyes.

He heard the taxi drive away, but didn’t tear his eyes away from the cityscape. It was only when some gruff shoulder knocked against Eddie's, and he was pulled back to earth. After taking a moment to collect himself, Eddie walked out of the flowing sidewalk and onto the steps of the apartment building.

Before walking in, he reached into his pocket for the key that would let him into the set of hallways to get to his room. When it wasn’t in his right jacket pocket, he checked the left and then the right again. Panic grew, blossoming into a fire when there was no unchecked pocket and no key to the building, only to his apartment.

He took a breath in and another one out, but the effort was futile. He still felt like he was on the verge of combustion when he decided to just ring up a room to ask to be let in.

Eddie let himself into the lobby-of-sorts of the apartment building (it was a mostly blank room consisting of a board and a locked door), and tried to cool the panic stirring up in his lungs with a long breath. He took note of the inhaler in his back pocket to calm himself before settling himself before the board of his destiny, as his occasionally fantastical mind referred to it.

Sufficiently convinced that he could handle the next set of events, whatever the hell they were, Eddie stared at the grid of pearly white buttons. He let the pads of his fingers trail softly over them, the romantic streak in his mind looking at the possibilities hidden in it. His hand, of its own accord as far as Eddie's concern, drifted to the mid-left of the broad board. He took a look at the room number, just to be sure (it was E4, and the number/letter pair burned itself into his mind with a crisp harshness. He supposed it was a result of his heightened emotion). Finally, he put his index finger on the button and pushed firmly, leaving no room for hesitation. 

The piercing, alarm like sound was unpleasant for him, but he persisted until whoever was on the other end answered back.

"Who is this?" asked a rough voice, raspy with sleep. Eddie smiled despite himself, glad that he actually got a response.

"Eddie, Eddie Kapsbrak. I just moved in, and I don’t have my building key. Could you let me in?"

"What time is it?" Based on the slow, fatigued rhythm of the voice on the other end, Eddie presumed that he had only heard about half of what he had said. A yawn could be heard through the rickety speaker, further solidifying the tiredness of the man in E4.

"10:30, if my watch is anything to go by," said Eddie, carefully stepping around his words, making sure they were slow and not too rambling. He still felt the panic itch beneath his skin, but began to put on the most calm, collected face he could.

"Shit! Do you have a bottle of water, by any chance? I have an appointment and I can't turn myself into a man worthy of New York this quickly without help."

The request was odd, but Eddie still peeked into his satchel to check, and smiled lightly when he found an unopened bottle.

"I’ve got water. Room E4, right?"

"Absolutely. Come on up."

Eddie heard a click, and strode towards the door, feeling optimism beneath his feet. He pushed the door to the building open with ease- it wasn’t not the grand, decorated door at the building's front, this one was thinner and had a weaker knob- and he held his case, letting it swing back and forth as he made his way down a hall and up a flight of stairs. He followed this pattern until he reached the fifth floor. He let his free hand trail on the painted white banister by his side, but quickly retracted it at the feeling of dust beneath his fingertips.

He stopped in place, holding his hand mid-air to figure out what to do about the dust. He could feel the tips of his fingers begin to itch, and he had read enough about dust to know its dangers. Before Eddie could take a second to think, he jerkily wiped it off on the front of his jacket, before realizing that he had basically just transferred the dangerous substance from his skin to another place on his body.

Idiot, idiot, idiot, he thought, berated himself with a venomous tongue. Eddie then used his palm to make brushing movements on the coat to get as much of the dust off of it as necessary before pulling out some hand sanitizer from a pocket inside his coat.

He put a copious amount of the aloe vera scented jelly on his hands, and scrubbed with veracity as he continued walking, stilted and distracted, his attention focused on purging the dust from his vicinity. His mind began cycling through the possibilities, but was interrupted as he gave a glance to the placard next to a door, and was shocked out of his illness infested reverie with the realization that he was a few rooms away from E4.

E1 may have looked the same as E2 which looked the same as E3, but E4 was an anomaly, a misfit among the uniform set of doors. First, there was a welcome mat, and a well used one at that. There were scrapes of dried mud, and the corner was stained with a faded crimson color, probably red wine. There were some words printed on it, but they were worn past readability. Eddie knocked three times, keeping a borderline musical pattern to them. He didn’t get a response for a long enough time that he moved his hand to knock again, but he was interrupted as the door was swung open, revealing the man who lived in E4.

Eddie found his breath taken away, but not in the way that he was used to. The man was dressed in a tuxedo shirt that was a few sizes too big (on second thought, it probably didn’t even belong to him) and a novelty sleeping mask pushed onto his forehead. The mask was rose pink with shiny gold eyelashes, and it must’ve been either a gag gift or a party favor. He was lanky, with wild, dark hair that curled around in effortless twirls. There was a smattering of freckles around his nose and cheeks, and he had cheekbones that made Eddie want to collapse in the middle of the hallway.

The amount of time it took for Eddie to find himself helplessly infatuated with him was about the same amount of time as it took for the man to collect himself from his slumber just enough to groggily open his mouth.

"D’ya have the water, Eds?" he asked, voice dragging and low.

"Don’t call me Eds," Eddie responded without thought, shaking himself a bit as he grabbed the water out of his satchel and handing it to the guy, who grabbed it with a heavy hand and casually beckoned Eddie inside.

"Hey, what’s your name?" Eddie asked, stepping in after him carefully, putting his satchel and suitcase next to the doorway.

"Richie Tozier's my name, and breaking hearts is my game," slurred Richie, smiling to himself at some hidden memory, before uncapping the water and taking a deep, long drink. Eddie felt his heart twinge in an odd, bitter way.

Richie continued to drink, and Eddie took a look around his apartment.

E4 was as unusual on the inside as it was on the outside, as it was simultaneously cluttered and empty. There was a nice couch which had just been slept on, if the blanket and pillows were anything to go by, but it was paired with the oddest side table Eddie had ever seen. It was misshapen and crooked, like a shop class project gone wrong. Curled at a leg of the side table was a tan-colored cat, who slept peacefully.

"You have a cat?" Eddie asked, eying the pet with wariness, remembering a specifically scarring testimonial he read about a claw scratching out an eye that had made him swear off pets when he first read it in college.

"Yep. His name's Cat," Richie answered, putting down the bottle and moving to the other side of the living room. There, he pulled off the eye mask and placed it on top of a stack of newspapers.

"Short for Catherine? Nice pun."

"No, he’s just Cat. As in the animal. He’s a free spirit, doesn’t need a name. We're kindred spirits, him and I. I barely have a name myself," explained Richie, his voice becoming floaty as he became a bit more alert. He grabbed a hairbrush from the seat of a wooden rocking chair, and began to casually run it through his hair as he rambled.

"How can you barely have a name? Everyone has a name, whether they like it or not," said Eddie, following Richie as he moved to get something from his bedroom. He leaned against the doorway, arms crossed, as he watched Richie fish around for something.

"What if someone is called by everything but their name? What if people just point at them and start talking? They don’t really have a name," said Richie, as he found what he was apparently looking for at the bottom of a small basket. He held up the glinting slip of metal victoriously, and on second sight, Eddie realized that it was a jeweled clip.

"Well then, I guess their name is just 'Hey you', or the name that they introduce themselves as. You can’t just not have a name."

"Maybe so," replied Richie, lackadaisical and gorgeous in the pink lampshaded lights of his room. He peered into a mirror and slipped it into his hair, before grabbing a wide brimmed hat on his bedside table. An easy silence followed, before curiosity stirred in Eddie once more.

"So, what’s with the rush? What big event warrants all of..." Eddie trailed off, trying to find the right word for the flurry of hair clips and clutter that was this whole event, before finally choosing to make a noncommittal hand gesture as he said "this".

"I’m seeing Sally Tomato, and visiting hours are tight. He’s in Sing Sing right now, and I’ve got to give him the weather report," said Richie as he finished his sentence by moving into the adjoining bathroom.

"Sing Sing? The jail?"

Richie stuck his head out of the bathroom doorway to answer, and it was so cartoonish and peculiar that Eddie felt the corners of his mouth turn up, almost against his will.

"You know, I always thought that Sing Sing should be the name of an opera house," said Richie, and he then left Eddie's sight again. Eddie, however, could hear strains of an impression of an opera singer through the distance. It wasn’t a refined mimic, as the voice drifting through the doorways was more Richie's than anyone else’s, but it held an odd charm.

Richie then darted out of the bathroom, arms outstretched as he searched for something on the floor. He paused to look up at Eddie, staring bemusedly down at him.

"I’m looking for shoes, nice black ones. Shiny. You’ll know it’s mine if there’s a white line on the sole, it’s how I keep track of them at parties," he then dived under his bed, and Eddie decided not to contemplate on parties that required an absence of shoes and instead went looking.

There another stretch of silence, now accompanied with the musical sounds of shuffling through a messy bedroom, before Eddie spoke up again.

"You mentioned a weather report. What’s the deal with that?"

"Well, my good old friend Sally passes along messages with another one of my jail visitor friends. They’re always weird things, but never funny enough, which is a real shame. I mean, if you’re just going to tell each other the weather, might as well make it fun, right? But my little Sun-Dried Tomato wants me to quote verbatim, like some kind of fuckin' Latin teacher. It’s ridiculous, but what can you do? I mean, one time I- Found it! Got one shoe out of two. Any luck, Eds?"

Eddie tried to will the cobweb off of his left hand while making a sad gesture with his right.

"No luck whatsoever."

Richie, in that moment, seemed to be hit with some divine inspiration, looking past Eddie at a rickety wardrobe.

"Can you reach deep, deep in the clothes part of the wardrobe? I think Bev may have pulled something. That’s her usual stash space."

"Is Bev in Sing Sing too?" asked Eddie as he followed the instructions, his palm touching the (dusty, so ridiculously dusty) back wall of the wardrobe as he fanned it across to find the shoes. Richie was laughing softly at something Eddie couldn’t decipher when Eddie's hand hit the trademark stiff leather of a nice shoe, and he grabbed it with confidence, pulling them out victoriously. 

Richie gave a cheer, and Eddie threw it across the room. Richie's catch was successful despite Eddie's inability to aim, and Richie disappeared back into the bathroom. Eddie, officially in the bedroom of a guy he had just met, took a deep breath and looked around.

This was an unknown feeling, the feeling of newness as it crashed its waves on him. He breathed it in, let himself soak in the unfamiliarity of it, until he was interrupted by the squeaking of door hinges. He looked to the door of the bathroom, and felt himself drown. 

If Richie was beautiful in sleepwear and an eye mask, he was absolutely breathtaking in his streetwear. 

His outfit, a semi-casual suit with a wide brimmed hat, was a fascinating sort of elevated normalcy. Richie himself, Eddie realized, was a sort of elevated normalcy. He had routines and schedules and everything that made Eddie dread daylight, but every movement was accompanied by a panache that was addicting.

"Do I look okay?" asked Richie, doing a goofy twirl.

"Yeah, I guess," replied Eddie, closing his dropped jaw and trying to play it cool. Richie rolled his eyes, smiling brightly as he pushed past the blushing Eddie, who followed his path as it led both of them into the hallway.

Finally, there Eddie stood, a changed man in the cramped quarters of the carpeted hallway in his new apartment building, the man of his dreams on his way out. Richie's back was turned as he flitted down the hall, swinging a bag with one hand and adjusting his hat with the other, and Eddie called out to him.

"Hey, Richie!"

Richie turned around, somehow looking both hopeful and afraid.

"See you around," said Eddie, and he smiled as Richie gave a soft wave.

Richie turned back, and Eddie swiveled to the direction of his room, feeling something warm and sunny grow in him.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Richie pops into Eddie's apartment in the middle of the night, and things are chill until they aren’t

A handful of days later, when Eddie had received all the keys he’d ever need and his apartment had been decorated by furniture he neither chose nor paid for, Eddie and Richie had another encounter.

It happened in the night, when Eddie was half asleep after the longest phone conversation with his mom to date. An abandoned book was haphazardly hanging at his side, and the lamp next to his bed still shone brightly. His growing sleep was disturbed by a set of loud, quick knocks at his window. 

He opened bleary eyes to the faint outline of Richie Tozier, perched on the fire escape, silhouetted by the white light of the moon and clad in a white bathrobe and bottleneck glasses. It must’ve been a vision, or a really weird dream, so Eddie closed his eyes again until hearing louder, more urgent knocking.

He dragged himself out of his bed, trudging over to the window to let him in, even though he wasn’t totally convinced that this wasn’t just a vision sent by god to convince him to change his life. Eddie began to wake up a little, as when he opened his window he was hit by a swift current of cold air, which was intense enough to shock him into stillness, a stillness that was only interrupted by Richie jumping into his apartment. By the time that Richie landed with a dull thud, a little bit worse for wear, Eddie had been sufficiently woken up. 

The only emotion he could conjure up was confusion with vague undertones of barely-concealed awe, and he began to close his window as Richie smoothed some of the wrinkles out of his bathrobe and adjusted the (frankly ridiculous) glasses. Eddie could see the outlines of a pajama shirt and silk pants, and only found himself more confused.

"So why grace me with your presence at-" he looked over Richie's shoulder to the alarm clock beside his bed, "11:33 at night?"

"Why else? Some guys just can’t take a hint," explained Richie, brushing his hair back as he looked around. "Nice place, by the way."

Eddie could only offer an incredulous look. He rested against the closed window, arms crossed as Richie began to walk around, his fingers trailing over the tops of tables and shelves as he explored.

"My mom, she decorated it."

"Well send her my love, it looks great," said Richie, continuing his search until he landed on a bottle of whiskey, and he pulled it off of the table, eying it appreciatively.

"I’m not drinking with you, not right n-"

"Mind if I call you Stan? You remind me of him, you’re uptight," said Richie, lost in his own world as he examined the label before putting it down again. Eddie's brow only furrowed further, simultaneously wanting to know everything and nothing at all.

"Who’s Stan?" he asked, slowly and carefully.

"My best friend from Maine. He's my moon, y'know? He's uptight, and likes birds, but I couldn’t imagine a world without him in it. He's... away, right now, but when he gets back, the world won’t be ready.," Richie spoke the words to mostly to himself and Eddie didn’t know how to deal with this new, vulnerable side to Richie, the side that wore glasses and had some faraway soulmate. 

"You can call me Stan, if you want," said Eddie softly at Richie's turned back, Richie turned, giving Eddie fatal eye contact and a watery smile.

"Want to break some out?" asked Richie, lifting the unopened bottle again.

"I don’t drink," said Eddie, the sentence abrupt and awkward. He had a lot more to say, of course, about the essays worth of negative effects, of kidney failure and alcohol dependency and-

"Make an exception for tonight?"

"Sure. Why not?"

There were many reasons why not, but when Richie passed Eddie his filled glass, the brush of fingertips against fingertips effectively shut his brain up. He held the glass carefully in his hands, looking down at the shiny hardwood floor with trepidation, his mind playing out the possibilities of the way that, if dropped, the glass would splatter shards around the room, and the wild card of pain that it would present. He was spared from his anxieties when he glanced up at Richie to see him settling down in a chair, stretching his legs and putting his feet on the footrest. His ankles were crossed in an unnecessarily glamorous fashion, and Eddie took a prim seat on his bed with a private smile, still not taking a sip of the drink.

"So, what do you do? I’m sure having a hot mom doesn’t take up all of your time," said Richie, still shuffling around and getting comfortable in the chair.

"I write," said Eddie shortly, turning his gaze to the amber liquid that ripples around in his mostly-decorative glass.

"Stories? Novels and shit? That’s cool, man! What do you write about?" Richie said, and his voice was boisterous enough to earn a look from Eddie.

"Not stories, essays. Studies and the like. About disease, mostly. Wrote an essay in grad school about morals in movies meant for kids, but it wasn’t a hit," Eddie punctuated his words with a swig, which was met immediately with a cough.

"Why not? Sounds like a blast to me."

"My... sponsors aren’t much for the touchy feely stuff. They just want me to stick to medicine, which makes sense."

"When was the last time you wrote anything?" Richie asked, his face oddly serious.

"Yesterday, I guess?" Eddie answered, his voice pitched a smidgeon higher than usual.

"Where is the ribbon on your typewriter, then?" 

A silence passed, and Eddie wondered, in his hurried scramble of a mind, how he had actually spent the past few days. He didn’t have much of a deadline, he just had to get an essay to his mom about the dangers of sharing food (he always had the oddest prompts) by the end of the month, but that wasn’t going to be much.

In retrospect, his week had been spent walking through New York, wasting time in shops where he didn’t buy anything. He was launched into a tailspin of questioning, asking himself why he didn’t do the work that he got paid for, why he just elected to waste time. Hell, he didn’t even try to do the work.

"Are you okay? I didn’t want to cause a thing, I was just curious. It’s nothing-"

"I haven’t written anything, if I’m being honest. It’s for dumb reasons. Can we talk about something else?" Eddie took a harsh drink, and was shocked to find the glass empty.

"So, your mom-"

"Let’s not talk about that, either. I would kill for another drink."

"Coming right up," said Richie, pulling up the bottle and moving towards the bed, his own glass abandoned on the table. He sat next to Eddie, a little bit too close. He poured into Eddie's cup, carefully handling the heavy weight of the bottle. The moment was silent, but not in the way that their previous bouts of quiet were.

This one wasn’t comfortable nor uncomfortable, it was just tense. It was an odd tableau, Richie focused on keeping the proportions of liquid to empty space just right, while Eddie's eyes were fixed on Richie's bent head, eyes wide. His lips were slightly parted, feeling their lack of space with a keen recognition. Richie was mostly focused on his task, his glasses falling down the bridge of his nose the slightest bit as whisky slowly slid out of the bottle, a thin, careful stream collecting in the cup. Eddie could’ve guess that he was completely oblivious to Eddie's stares, if it were not for the way that, barely visible under the veil of his hair, a blush crept up on the tops of his freckled cheeks.

Eddie smiled a little, and Richie surfaced again when Eddie's glass was apparently to his liking.

Richie rose again and walked over to the chair to grab his own glass, but didn’t sit back down, instead choosing to walk back to Eddie's bed, tossing himself on the foot of the bed, sitting cross legged and a smile on his face. Eddie followed the action, placing himself at the head so his back was on the headboard. His face betrayed his surprise, but he still moved easily, the alcohol beginning to work its way through his system. 

"Now it’s a real party," said Richie, breaking out into a lazy, conspiratorial grin as he pushed his glasses up his nose with the hand not holding a glass.

"A true party," repeated Eddie, giving his own grin in return. It was a truer smile than his usual, not the tight-lipped one he gave to his mom, or the polite one he gave to retail workers when he wished them a good day. This was a vulnerable smile, the kind that belonged in lamp-lit rooms and alleyways. He ducked behind it for a second to take a sip of his drink, letting his eyes lower in a facsimile of shame, before raising them again to see Richie's own wide smile.

"You look less uptight when you smile, you should do it more," said Richie and his eyes had become soft and whimsical, and Eddie wondered for a second if Richie was living through some kind of memory. Nonetheless, Eddie let himself get lost in the dreamy haze of it, of the whirlwind of the night.

"Guess I just need more good reasons."

There was another silence, and Eddie wondered for a second if he should lean forward to kiss Richie before catching himself. Richie, apparently unknown to this plight, yawned and stretched, almost spilling the whiskey. With heavy lidded eyes, he reached over to put the drink on the side table, reaching over the suddenly tense Eddie.

"Can I sleep? Here? This bed just seems really warm and I-"

"Sure, of course you can."

Another silence ensued, interrupted by the sounds of fabric on fabric as Richie situated himself on the bed, pulling his bath robe tight as if it was its own blanket. Eddie shifted over, putting his own glass next to Richie's, not bothering to put a coaster down. Richie pulled off his glasses before leaning onto Eddie, who proceeded to put the glasses carefully on the table. He reclined against the headboard, looking down at his fast-asleep almost-friend. There was peace to Richie in his sleep, a peace that seemed to never find him in consciousness. The image was sweet, and it was burned into Eddie's mind when he drifted to sleep himself.

It was an hour or so later when he woke up again, and the lamp was still shining it’s soft, golden light to the room. The sky, still streaming in through the windows, was just a hint darker. The only difference was Richie, who was no longer calm and steady in his sleep. He was now moving as if trapped, writhing around as if trying to break free from something, trying to wriggle out of a dream.

He made noises of effort before he began speaking, his voice hoarse and so utterly terrified that Eddie wondered what was going on in his mind.

"Stan... Stan! Stan, it’s cold, it’s cold, it’s-" Richie rambled in his sleep, and Eddie looked on with a rapturous eye, trying to piece together the dream from Richie's words. 

Richie got quiet, before gasping awake, tears in his eyes that threatened to spill out over his cheeks. His body had tensed up into a sharp configuration, and he swiveled his head around with reckless abandon, trying to piece together where he was.

He saw the glasses on the bedside table before he saw Eddie, and threw them on, gathering himself before he was interrupted by Eddie's hand on his wrist.

It was this moment that Richie seemed to properly grasp that he was not simply alone in a stranger's apartment, and it took a few moments too long, but eventually Richie recognized Eddie through his scared fog.

"If we are going to be friends, you have to learn one thing about me," began Richie, wrenching his arm away from Eddie's helpless hold. Tears had begun to leak, leaving tracks that only reflected the barest shine of golden light. He looked embittered and angry like this, like his scars were suddenly visible for the world to see. He stood up, walking to the window and opening it.

Eddie could only sit helpless, frozen in shock at the quick turn of his evening.

"I can’t stand snoops," said Richie emphatically, leaving no room for response as he swiftly leapt through the window and onto the fire escape, moving quickly to his apartment, white robe flying in the night wind.

It took a few moments for Eddie to break out of his shock-still. When he did, he went to close the window, taking a moment to breathe in the cool night air, hoping that it would do something to give him understanding. No part of the night felt real, but he suspected that that's how life would always be with Richie in it.

Before closing the window, he leant over the open window, forearms against the cold windowsill, to look at the moon.

The moon shone brightly and blindingly, the unforgiving white beating down on Eddie's bared face. He peered into it, trying to figure it all out, trying to unlock it. He thought of Richie and Stan and the moon, and gazed into its light, seeking a revelation.

He gave up, eventually, closing the window and shutting off his lamp, purposely not looking at his alarm clock as he fell into bed, quickly following into a dark, dreamless sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading this!!! I appreciate all of the kudos, but what really drives this story forward are the comments! I hope you are all having a great winter break, and I wish everyone a good 2018.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eddie goes to a party and meets people who aren’t Richie.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> IM BACK FROM A MINOR HIATUS!!! Yay

When Eddie woke up the next morning, bleary eyed and tinged with the drag of sadness, it was to the sound of quick knocks and a hurried shuffle, followed by heavy footsteps. He groaned at the light streaming through the window, unnecessarily angry at the rays. He tried to close his eyes and fall back to sleep, but resistance was futile. He let his eyes pull themselves open, and pulled himself out of bed, one limb at a time. 

Once his eyes were completely open, he looked to the door, the source of the sound that woke him up in the first place. He rubbed his eyes as he stepped lightly over the carpeted floor, until he saw the crème envelope and typewriter ribbon on the floor, shoved under the crack in the door. He smiled at the typewriter ribbon, realizing that Richie must’ve been behind the shuffling and the knocks and the break from his sleep. He bent over to get the envelope, wincing at the soreness in his spine, and took it to his bed. 

He sat on top of his sheets, now rustled with a restless sleep, and opened up the envelope with a careful hand. He pulled out the letter itself, written on loose leaf and addressed to "Eds/Stan". His blooming smile faltered a bit at the name, but he continued reading nonetheless.

"Sorry about last night. Got you a typewriter ribbon, figured you'd put it to good use. Can I make this up to you with an invite to a party? Tonight at 8 till the police come. Be there or be square

-Hope everything can be cool again,  
Richie"

His smile had been cultivated into an unabashed grin, and he let the hope spread through him as he clutched the already-wrinkled looseleaf to his chest, his eyes falling closed in the new beginning.

There was a lot to work out, he knew. There were plans and explanations and a lot more hand sanitizer required to get anywhere with his charismatic neighbor, but this, Eddie thought, this was a start.

———

The party began a few hours later, and the distinct rumblings of polite conversation began to stir up at 7:30. There was always a group of people who optioned to show up early, and Eddie would’ve joined them if it weren’t for his sudden obsession over looking just right that caused him to actually show up at 8. 

He was dressed in a dress shirt paired with a blue jacket that belonged to his late father. The blue had been worn and stressed into a color that was nearly pastel and there was a small tear on the inside of the coat's elbow, but it was the only jacket he owned that wasn’t directly bought by his mother, so he wore it with pride as he entered Richie's apartment. 

The gathering was pretty tame, as far as Eddie could see. It was a smattering of couples and trios talking as they leaned on walls or lounged on couches, and it didn’t take long to find Richie in the kitchen, feeding something to Cat while he talked absentmindedly with someone in a turtleneck. 

Eddie set the heavy bottle of wine he had bought for the party on a lopsided coffee table and gravitated towards the empty end of the couch. He wiped his sweaty palms on his pants, and looked around nervously. He was caught in a struggle between seeking out a conversation partner or letting one find him when he was saved from his nervous plight by a red headed woman.

"Mind if I join you? Jerome took the chair because he’s a rat bastard, and it’s here or the table," the woman spoke with a cadence so sure that Eddie was shocked still, in awe of her ethereal presence. He chose, finally, to nod, and the couch became certifiably crowded with the addition.

"Hi, I’m Eddie-" he blurted out, uncomfortably sticking his hand into the narrow sliver of space between them. The static sound of other partygoers had only increased in volume, and Eddie worried that his words had been swallowed up by the noise.

"Beverly Marsh. Everyone just says Bev, because syllables are too advanced for this crowd," she said, and she seemed to pull a glass out of nowhere, and took a sip from it. Eddie opened his mouth to respond, but was interrupted by Richie has he barreled towards them, arms spread out wide.

"Bev! Stan the man!"

They both stood up, Bev going to take the first hug. When she separated from Richie, she had a few spare seconds to look at Eddie with a suspicious sort of wonder, but Eddie was too quickly pulled into a warm hug to think much on it.

He reveled instead on the feeling of Richie's arms around him, and that was enough, if only for a few seconds. When he surfaced back to the world, Richie's hands were still resting on his shoulders, but his head had turned to other side of the room. Eddie turned his head when he heard the breaking of glass, and the moment was effectively broken as Richie rushed to stop the ill-advised drinking game. 

Once Richie was out of his sight, Eddie turned to Bev, who was staring at Eddie with a passionate glint in her eyes.

"So you’re Stan?" she asked, eyebrows furrowing slightly.

Oh, so that was what this was all about. Eddie sighed out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding, and began to explain.

"I’m Eddie, Richie just calls me that. Apparently I remind him of Stan, or something like that. It’s not even something I totally understand, it’s just a thing, I guess," he rambled, his hands wringing with a nervous intensity.

"Fuck, man. That’s…something. You know who Stan is, right?"

"His best friend from Maine, right?"

"Yeah. That’s right. What else do you know?" Beverly asked, still standing as she took a sip of her drink. Someone had bumped into Eddie, making them stand a bit closer. Eddie looked nervously around, and saw that their seat on the couch had been taken.

"He’s away, or something. But still alive, I think?"

"He’s in the military but-"

"But what?" Eddie asked, feeling the anxiety in his bones.

"I don’t know Stan, but I do know Richie and what he’s said about his… friend and…" rambled Bev, her manicured hand gesticulating with sharp, fearful movements.

"And?"

"Some people aren’t meant for war."

A tense silence passed between them, Bev refusing to make eye contact and instead choosing to wave to an acquaintance who had just entered. Eddie put his hand on her shoulder to bring her back to the conversation, and Bev flinched momentarily before letting her eyes fall back to Eddie.

"What the hell does that mean?"

"When Stan comes back, he won’t be the Stan who watched sunsets on the beach with Richie. It won’t be Stan the Man. Richie won’t be ready for that, and-"

"If Stan comes back," said Eddie, quietly but definitively.

"What? Stan is coming back. I don’t want to live in a world with a version of Richie in which Stan doesn’t come back. That would kill him, Ed-"

"I know! I know, Stan is his best friend, his moon, all of that, but what happens if he really isn’t built for war? We can’t rule out a possibility because we don’t like it."

"How long have you known Richie?"

"Shorter than you have known him, I know, but-"

"Richie operates on certain things he believes are true. Phony things. Things like Stan coming back or that his cat will never have a name or just that he can survive on sugar and not much else, but he really believes these things, Eddie. The things he tells himself when he wakes up and when he goes to sleep? Those are his base realities. You rip one away, it’ll break him. So shut up about if he’ll come back at all and enjoy this party, because Richie wants you to. I want you to. So just stop, okay?"

He has an out of body experience at this, where he realizes that he’s shouting over the relentless noise of the party to argue about something he has no real control over. He’s at the first truly adult party of his life, and he’s spending it being upset, so he shuts up. 

He looked into Beverly's steely eyes and asked where he can find a drink. His own words sound muted and blurry, but Bev heard them somehow and pointed to the kitchen.

He walked and maneuvered around the new additions to the party and found an unopened wine cooler on the stained counter of Richie's kitchen, and found himself opening it, sipping it contemplatively while let his gaze fan out lazily over the gathering. He smiled when he properly spotted Richie, putting out fires with the elegant flick of his wrist and chatting with members of a jazz band.

Time passed, with Eddie leaning onto a counter and just letting himself observe. His focus dragged to Beverly, who kept her arm wrapped around a blonde, flirting obviously and lightheartedly. It was a stark change from the Beverly who's fear shone in her rich blue eyes, and a welcome one. He smiled lightly, taking another sip. He was lost in his reverie by a tap on the shoulder from Richie, who sidled up next to him. 

Everything about Richie in this moment was loose, from his smiles to the way that his arms crossed on the counter with ease, one arm occupied in holding a glass to his lips.

"Do you see him over there? I want to marry him," said Richie without even offering a hello, flippant as he pointed at someone from across the room.

Eddie was focused on the way that Richie's fingers gently cradled his champagne glass (that was filled with, oddly enough, red wine), but managed to tear his eyes away from that delicate torture to the man that Richie was apparently infatuated with. When his eyes caught him, it was unmistakeable: Eddie was beat.

"I guess, if handsome, rich looking men with beautiful eyes are your type, then I could see the appeal," said Eddie, nervously as he sized up the apparent competition.

"No, not him, the one to his right."

The guy to his right, who was apparently the object of Richie's affection, was a scrawny man with an uncertain haircut. Everything about his look screamed serial arsonist.

"Do you think it’s possible that you have terrible taste in men?" Eddie teased, trying to avoid any hint of sincerity in his voice.

"You have to understand, I don’t look for good men, I look for rich ones. It’s simple economic sense. Patrick there? He's one of the 50 richest men under 50 in the country. Why would I, an attractive man resigned to eating the same pasta dish day after day, pass up on that opportunity? We can’t all be paid to write essays," said Richie, taking another swig of his drink.

"Who’s the other guy? The one who's actually attractive?" Eddie asked, squinting at the mismatched pair.

"Him? That’s Bill Denbrough. He writes scary stories. You two might actually be able to strike up a conversation about writing. Why? Interested?" Richie asked, wiggling his eyebrows in the most exaggerated, cartoonish way possible and knocking his elbow against Eddie's. Eddie quickly withdrew from the touch, a move that Richie didn’t seem to notice.

"No, of course not! It’s just- I don’t know. Thought you might be... never mind."

"Loosen up, Eds! You thought a guy was cute, it’s fine. Do you need some more to drink? Turn this into a riot instead of a regular party?"

Eddie looked around at the party, which had ascended to total chaos. People were crying, laughing, and breaking things. It was completely and utterly Richie, but it only caused fits and starts in Eddie's chest. This simply wasn’t the life of an organized essayist with undiagnosed anxiety and an overbearing mother.

"I think I’ll turn down that drink. You should head over to Patrick, though," said Eddie, drawing further into himself and shooing off Richie. With a worried look and a calming smile, Richie slipped out of the kitchen and into the cacophony.

Eddie watched from afar, and time began to do its own work, ebbing and flowing around him. He watched as the party escalated even further, and Richie left the party with Patrick on his arm, presumably to go on a walk. 

It was then that Eddie heard the faint sounds of something, the dull whine of police sirens. It sparked a panic response, and he stood at full attention, before darting into the crowd to devise an escape. He saw Bill, and grabbed his arm on impulse, pulling him out of the other side of the dance floor, next to the bathroom door. Bill, intoxicated and pleasantly confused, looked down at Eddie and laughed at some joke that Eddie hadn’t heard.

"Bill, the police are coming. What do I do?"

His laughter dropped off, and he looked around, utterly confused. It struck Eddie that, first and foremost, Bill wasn’t necessarily as smart as he looked. Bill also was, for all intents and purposes, an absolute stranger who hasn’t heard anything about Eddie.

"Let’s jump out the bathroom window. Fire escape. I think."

"I think so too," said Eddie, breathing a sigh of relief that Bill could come through. His anxiety clouded all of his decision making skills, and the blare of sirens in the background only worsened his comprehension of the situation.

"We need to run, bad press would be... bad," Bill rambled, not making a motion. Eddie did it instead, darting towards the closed bathroom door and throwing it open with reckless abandon. There was a kissing couple leaning against the wall, but that didn’t stop the quest forward.

Eddie stepped over the walls of the bath under the window, and was followed by Bill, who reached towards the latch of the window. He undid it with fumbling hands to the soundtrack of sirens and Eddie whispering "my mom's going to kill me" over and over. Finally, it came undone, and the escape stretched in front of them with a divine solidity. 

"Hoist me up," said Eddie, acutely aware of his height. He cursed before stepping on Bill's laced hands to climb out. He landed on the metal escape, and narrowly avoided Bill falling on him amidst Bill's own escape.

They heard the sound of an opening door and a booming voice, exchanged a handshake, and scattered in different directions. Eddie scurried to his apartment, gasping in lungful of air as he jumped into his still-unlocked window.

He landed with a thud onto the pristine carpet, before resting his back to the wall and resting a hand to his beating heart.

He let his eyes come to a close, and smiled into the quiet air. The adrenaline rush calmed, and he let himself revel in the calm after a storm.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In the case that you read this and thought "I want to see more!", please comment! Comments energize me and get me actually writing. 
> 
> Thank you for reading!


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some snippets of Eddie's life as he eases into New York. Including the famous Moon River scene that started this whole fic, when I saw the au idea a few moments ago and had to write.

The next morning, Eddie woke up early, ignoring the fog of drowsiness around him to take a morning walk.

He needed to sweat out the lingering vibrations of the night before, as the noise of the partygoers still rung in his ears and residual jolts of panic from his epic escape would still rip through him. 

Eddie found that he took more morning walks nowadays than he did before. The sight of the rising sun was just more appealing in New York, even if he was watching it through the city smog. As he stepped out of his apartment building, still in his blue jacket from the night before, he wondered where Richie was. He might’ve been with Hockstetter, he might’ve been at another afterparty, or something else entirely. Anxiety swirled around Eddie, but he shook it off, clearing his mind as he kept walking down the sidewalk.

He checked his watch, using the light from a street lamp to read its scratched, worn face. 6:51. Eddie smiled a private smile at his wrist, as if remembering an inside joke. He looked at the sky, looking around buildings for the horizon. 

He kept walking, and soon, a perfect view of the horizon happened upon him, in a wide gap between two buildings. This was a new path, so he had to search for a bench that would provide him the best view. 

The sky, stretched out behind the peaks and valleys of skyscrapers and office buildings, was still dark, but the horizon held a splattering of deep red, the promise of something new. Eddie watched with wide, young eyes, captivated by the brushstrokes of the sky. Nature wasn’t something he knew well, as it was simply too dangerous, too sharp, and too dirty to be interacted with. The sky, however, was the exception to this.

Since coming to New York, Eddie found that he’d become a bit of an expert on sunrises. He could tell the difference between a sunny morning and a cloudy one by the way it looked at 7:00, and though it never really came in handy, it was certainly a beautiful way to start each morning.

Richie was still lingering in his mind, but Eddie shoved it aside to watch the sun slowly creep into the sky. The morning sky shifted into vivid oranges and pinks, before settling into the pastel blues and lilacs of 7:03. 

The earth was fresh all around, and Eddie decided that being a bit too romantic about some things wasn’t the end of the world.

—

A week later, when Richie's house had been cleaned by a team of Richie, Bev, and Eddie, Richie and Eddie took a trip to Sally Tomato, his jailbird friend.

If Eddie were to describe Sally as anything, a jailbird would honestly be the best descriptor he could come up with. Sally Tomato was the kind of guy who appeared eerily comfortable in the prison. His handcuffs hung on his wrists with the kind of cool swagger that they appeared more decorative than functional, and his eyes were never wide with shock or apprehension.

Sally looked at Eddie from across the table with slitted, wrinkled eyes, his head tilted to the side as he sized up the pipsqueak before him. He let out a sharp exhale and nodded, before turning to Richie.

"How're you doing?" Sally asked.

"Good. And you?"

"Just fine. Who’s this?"

Eddie was still marveling at the possibility of feeling "just fine" in prison, before he felt an elbow in his side, and held out his hand for a sweaty handshake.

"Eddie. Eddie Kapsbrak," they shook hands for a second, before Eddie took his hand back to wipe it on his pants.

"Are you a lawyer?" 

"I’m afraid not," he answered, smiling a bit.

"Cool. Why’re you here?" Sally only seemed a bit interested in the question, as he started picking at his fingernails.

Eddie looked sideways at Richie, and felt his heart flutter to see that he was looking back. After a second or two of eye contact and quiet deliberation, Eddie turned back to answer.

"Because we're friends, and this is a part of Richie's life."

Sally looked unimpressed, but not actively displeased, which was victory enough.

"So, Sal-Tomat, what's the weather report?" asked Richie.

"Grey skies in Philadelphia, 20% chance of snow and sleet."

"Whatever floats your boat."

After some idle conversation, Sally was called away from visiting hours, and Eddie watched his retreating back with wary, suspicious eyes, his nervousness fading as he began to wonder what the weather report was about.

It was all quickly forgotten, however, when Richie reached over and grabbed his hand. Eddie was entitled to his moments of weakness.

—

Eddie stuck his head out of the large window to follow the soft strains of music. The rush of cold air that hit him from the outside was barely a deterrent to the blush that flooded his cheeks at the sight of Richie, strumming a guitar with an unmatched tenderness as he sang softly, a dollar-Store towel wrapped haphazardly around his damp curls. He was still in his pajamas, a loose pastel blue shirt that was a few sizes too big and brown sweatpants.

He sang into the blank city sky, his body spilling out from the windowsill onto the fire escape. Eddie wondered for a second if, in Richie’s mind, he was singing to someone, or if Richie just enjoyed the way that the air swallowed up his words. Maybe he just found beauty in the ephemeral nature of it, the way that his song of dreaming and drifting was just as lost as he was.

The song came to its sweet, sad end, and Eddie almost panicked as Richie’s eyes turned to him. They were panning the smoggy landscape before catching Eddie, and Eddie could see a flare of fear in Richie’s tired eyes that was quickly quieted with a long, soothing breath.

Richie then gave Eddie a smile, lazy and gorgeous. They shared something quiet in that moment, something akin to recognition between their glances.

Eddie opened his mouth to say something, but a rustle behind him reminded him that his mom was on her way. He was shocked out of the moment, forced to go back to the cotton candy prison of his reality. He gave a sad, watery smile to Richie, and ducked out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading this chapter, I know it’s short. I hope y’all are ready for the long one that’s coming up! There’s going to be more exposition into Richie and his past at Derry, hope it’s exciting. You can follow my It sideblog @kapsbrakclapsback, or you can HMU at my main blog, @thesubtextmachine. I also happen to love comments, so please indulge me!


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Doc Golightly/Mike Hanson pops in on the scene

The sting of the morning sun was harsh as it streamed through the windows, and Eddie sat cross legged on the bed as his mother paced the carpeted floors of his apartment, fiddling around and doing what was a cross between flagrant snooping and organization. 

He was zoning in and out of her perpetual monologue, picking up choice phrases as he stared at the loose thread on one of his pillows. He was slowly easing back into concentration when she finally said something that sparked his interest.

"...this man outside the apartment. For two days now. He just sits there and watches. I’m afraid for you, Eddie. He seems very threatening... he’s one of them, you see."

"One of what?" he asked, his eyebrows beginning to arch.

"Come to the window and look," she answered, moving towards the window that was the site of so many events she would never know about. It made him wince to think about, but Eddie still climbed off the bed to see this mystery man.

He figured out what his mom meant the second he looked at the street below him, and the black man sitting on a metal bench, his eyes going from his newspaper to the apartment, as if he were waiting for someone. Eddie wanted to scoff at his mother's behavior, but couldn’t help but feel the quiet tendrils of worry, worry that this had something to do with Richie.

"How long has he been here?"

"Yesterday and today. He hasn’t left."

Eddie remembered that he hadn’t seen the man on his morning walks, but figured that if his mother knew that he left the apartment in the "dangerous" early morning, nothing good would come of it. 

"Interesting," he said noncommittally, turning away from the sunshine and into the softer surfaces of his apartment, smiling a bit at the ridiculous noises of shock behind him. By the time he sat in his previous place, his mom had given up, returning back to her milling about.

He’d investigate later, but his mother didn’t have to know anything about it.

—

After his mother left, puttering all the way down the stairs and giving the man on the street a long, wary look, he waited for a few minutes before leaving himself. 

The sun was beating down on his jacketed back, and when he stepped out on the pavement, the man's eyes darted up from his paper. The interest of his gaze said enough of the story, and Eddie decided to walk. He figured that the man would follow him if Eddie had anything to do with it, and as he moved down the sidewalk, maneuvering around pedestrians, he wondered what Richie had gotten himself into.

The mafia? Drug cartels? It all had the exhausting hint of possibility, but Eddie kept walking.

He shot a quick glance over his shoulder, only to find that the man had begun to follow him, the newspaper falling to his side.

The possibilities of what Richie had fallen into became all he could think about, and as he came closer to the park, the options became more and more ridiculous. 

The weirdest part was that Eddie just knew that this was something of Richie's doing. There was no way that he would’ve been tailed by a stranger if it wasn’t for the man, there was no way he would’ve escaped the police if he didn’t beep his room on that fateful day. 

One more glance over his shoulder gave him one more confirmation that the man was still following him, and Eddie crossed the street and stepped into park grounds. All of the greenery shone with the lush quality of a park a few days after rain, and Eddie let the fresh air uplift him as he kept walking.

His winding path had no real destination, except for a good meeting spot for the inevitable confrontation with Richie's ex/mob boss/failed investor/Russian spy. Soon, he found a row of sleek, metal benches, still a bit damp with the recent rainfall. It was perfect.

He took a seat, square in the middle, with a confidence he ad never before known. Whoever this man was, Eddie was absurdly sure that if things went south, Eddie would be able to run fast enough to not get killed. 

He let his eyes close, and took a deep, long breath. On the exhale, his eyes fluttered open, and he turned to the direction he was coming from. He saw the man at a snack cart, buying a box of Cracker Jacks, before paying and stepping over to Eddie.

The silence between them seemed to get tense as he got closer, and even tender as he took a seat, crossing one leg over the other and offering to share the food. It was kind, comforting move, and Eddie took a piece.

Their shared quiet was rumpled by the crunch and chewing of the snack, and was properly broken by the man.

"I’m Mike, by the way," Mike said, momentarily looking at Eddie before turning his gaze to the flowers and trees in front of them.

"Eddie. Why did you follow me here?" Eddie asked, taking another Cracker Jack, and feeling the soft plastic covering of the toy inside.

"I hear you’re friends with Trashmouth. I need some help."

Trashmouth? Eddie wondered vaguely as he reached in again, and properly pulled out the toy. He found that it was a cheap tin ring, and he examined it.

"Can I keep this?" he asked on an impulse, rolling it between his fingers and feeling an odd energy within it.

"Sure. Can you help me out?"

"With what?" Eddie asked as he pocketed the ring, still in its casing. 

"I was friends with Richie back in Derry, and I need to tell him something. But things didn’t really end well, and I think it would be a good idea to have a buffer."

"What do you need to tell him?"

"It’s about Stan," Mike said, as if it were as simple as that. Eddie supposed that it actually was as simple as that, but he still felt a bit cheated.

"If it’s about Stan, I can help, I guess. Stan's not dead, right?" Eddie asked blandly, trying not to feel anything about the whole situation.

"No."

"Okay."

"We’ve gotta be delicate, though. I mean, Trashmouth ran away from home, for a reason. I can’t just walk in, you know?"

"Trashmouth?"

"It's what we called him. I don’t know what he’s like now, but he was a crazy kid. Always cursing up a storm, always saying the craziest things," Mike explained, his voice tinged with a fondness that made Eddie's stomach hurt.

"He's a bit like that now, I suppose," Eddie said, his eyes scanning the green landscape.

"So when can I see him?" Mike asked, nervously wiping his hands on the legs of his pants, suddenly restless.

"Right now. I just need to ease him into it. So just wait in the hall, and I can bring him out?"

"That sounds good. I just don’t want to scare him, is all. He can be a jumpy little guy, I know that more than anyone," said Mike, some dark memory shining behind his eyes. Eddie couldn’t tell if he wanted to know or not, and settled instead for silence.

—

There was something weirdly heavy about the air around Mike and Eddie as they ventured into the apartment, the kind of weight that make everything seem a bit sharper. As they passed by the doors on the first floor, they would feel the strains of music pass through the door as they got closer, before falling away as they walked further down the hall. This seemed to happen over and over, the brassy trumpets of jazz melding into the thin sounds of violins. It was only when Eddie reached the staircase leading right to Richie's room that he stopped Mike.

"Wait here, we don’t want to shock him. I’ll go up, say the situation, and lead you up."

"Sounds good," Mike said, uneasiness in the corners of his voice. 

"I’m gonna head up, now," Eddie said, bouncing a bit on the balls of his feet as anxiety began to thrum in his blood.

"Okay. And one more thing?"

"Yes?"

"If he doesn’t want to talk to me, just tell him I love him, okay? He forgets sometimes."

"Okay," Eddie said, feeling a pang in his stomach as he swiveled away from Mike, racing up the stairs with his hand squeaking against the banister. He wondered if he had a stomach bug, but pushed forward, knocking on Richie's door.

It took a few seconds for Richie to answer, and he was shoving on his left shoe with one hand as he opened the door with the other, obviously at the tail end of his morning routine.

"How's it goin, Spagheddie?" he asked, jovial as he leaned against the door frame to pull his shoe up so he could tie the laces. Eddie smiled despite himself, marveling at the way that even the tired hallway light managed to make Richie look like angel, albeit a ridiculous one with a crooked hat.

"Good enough. How about you, Trashmouth?" Eddie asked, pulling out the childhood nickname. Richie stopped. His foot dropped, and his face got a bit pale. 

"T-trashmouth? Is he here?"

Eddie didn’t get a chance to answer, because Richie had shoved past him, hurrying down the stairs. Eddie felt the off urge to faint, figuring out that there was no way this could end well.

"Stan? Stan! Stan the ma-" Richie yelled, a smile on his face before he properly descended, until he was frozen at the sight of Mike. 

Mike was stationed at the end, looking simultaneously guilty and fantastically happy. 

"Hey," Mike said, smiling the slightest bit. Across him, stood Richie, who seemed frozen in some glassy-eyed state of shock. 

"Mike," Richie whispered, smiling so sadly that the tears that quietly slipped out of the corner of his eyes seemed perfectly in place.

"How're things?" Mike asked, and Richie rushed towards him, hugging him so tightly that Eddie would’ve worried for his safety if Mike wasn’t hugging him back just as intensely. 

Richie began shaking, and it hit Eddie that there was an entire lifetime worth of Richie that he had never really known. As he leaned against the banister, watching the two old friends locked in their own tearful world, Eddie slowly creeped away, leaving them to their reverie.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Omg I love posting twice in one day,,, it makes me feel like the girl in the "I’m giving the gays everything they want" gif.... anyway, comment and SMASH that subscribe button! Hope you guys have a great day!


	6. Chapter 6

Eddie didn’t see Richie for a while after that, other than in little snapshots from cracked doors and open windows. This “Trashmouth” bond must be intense, he thought, considering the way that Richie always appears to be a step or two away from simply melting with some undefinable emotion. Sometimes they would pass each other in the halls, and Eddie would be forced to reconcile this new image of Richie with the one he had before.

There was something world-weary about “Trashmouth” that Eddie just couldn’t shake, even when his mother was trying to sweep him up in something or other (sometimes interior design, usually blind dates with eligible bachelorettes). It stayed on his mind, the newfound bags of purple-brown beneath his eyes, and the way that he seemed to carry some kind of guilt on his sloping shoulders.

Granted, that was the worst of it. 

There were other moments of Trashmouth, like the uproarious laughter Eddie could hear through a wall as he passed it, or how they seemed to understand each other on a miraculous level. Eddie could swear that whenever they moved, it looked like some kind of choreographed dance: no hint of awkwardness or unfamiliarity. 

For a burning second, Eddie wondered if Richie was going to fade away from his life, back to where this Mike guy came from, where _Stan_ is. Mysterious, vividly alive Stan, somehow more real in Richie’s mind than Eddie’s presence could ever be. 

The power of Richie’s past was so vague, so daunting, so overwhelming in everything it contained, that Eddie feared that Richie would fall right back in. 

Then, Eddie remembered that Richie had a life here, had duties and chores and all of those adult things. It was a false comfort, but he clung to it, the idea that while RIchie could leave Eddie, he simply couldn’t leave New York. 

He let this toss and turn in his mind, forever on a loop, until Richie himself interrupted it, swinging into his life with a set of quick, light knocks and a takeout box of lukewarm breakfast.

When Eddie opened his door to see Richie, with a wide smile and tired eyes, he had to juggle momentary annoyance piled on top of the swooning feeling that came with every interaction, the kind that made Eddie feel like he was letting his defenses down.

He bargained for not showing either of these emotions, and just letting Richie into his apartment with a blank face and an open mind.

Richie somehow looked older and younger than Eddie had ever seen him at the same time, with his crazy hair and glasses, paired with pastel casual clothes that were lazier than his usual getup. He walked through the apartment with ease, making a spot for himself on Eddie’s couch (knocking a throw pillow to the ground in the process) as Eddie himself followed him. Richie opened the paper container, and as if any of this was simple, he offered Eddie a piece of buttered toast.

“Why are you here?” Eddie asked, any harshness in his words cancelled out by his caught breath and sparkling eyes.

“Mike bought two train tickets back to Maine.”

His words hung in the air.

“Oh,” said Eddie, trying to keep all of his disappointment and sadness inside.

“I don’t wanna go back to Maine,” Richie said, far too casually, as he bit into his toast.

Eddie fumbled a bit, like he was holding air and he just dropped it, throwing him far off his balance. He heard Richie chuckle a bit, and as he righted himself again, Eddie could feel the ominous dust of something about to change. 

“So what do you want me to do about it?” Eddie asked, as if he was skeptical, as if he’d say no to anything that came out of Richie’s mouth, even though they both knew that Eddie would commit murder if Richie just asked nicely. It was just how they worked, apparently.

“Could you act as a buffer? Call me Richie and refuse to listen to stories about me when I was just a young’un?” Richie said, trying to coat ease onto his words as if saying them didn’t make his throat hurt.

“I could probably handle that.”

“Great. Meet me at the train station tomorrow, we’re gonna bid him farewell, New Yorker style.”

“So we’re gonna throw roaches at him and tell him to ‘forghetta bout it’?” Eddie joked, a smile blooming on his face when Richie let loose a laugh. It made his face look younger, somehow.

“That’s a good one, Eds, keep it in the arsenal, but I’m afraid we’re gonna be a bit more cordial. We’re just gonna say goodbye, let him know that he’ll be going home alone, and then I’ll give Mike a good hug, and then it’s all over.”

Richie said this, and stood up from the couch, dusting nonexistent dust off his pants. Eddie decided to test his luck.

“Why _aren’t_ you going back? I mean, don’t you love Mike, and everyone else back there?”

“Just because I love them doesn’t mean I should be there forever. Derry has a smell about it, y’know. You can sense it on Mike, if you ever get close enough. That’s Derry Dirt, right there. A bit poisoned, a bit cursed. And I used to be that, I used to be as scared and gross as everyone there, but I’m not _that_ anymore.”

Eddie just stayed quiet.

“Shit happened there, and just because Mike and Stan and everyone else can still survive and thrive when they’re drowning in those puddles, doesn’t mean that I can.”

“I see.”

A beat of silence, neither of them knew what to do.

“Keep the rest of the takeout, you need to eat more.”

Richie started walking out, as Eddie quipped an exhausted “you nag like my mother” as the door slammed shut.

-

The train station looked like a cave, with its high ceilings and leaks from the ceilings, and Eddie felt as if his stomach was totally empty, like it was inflated with helium, making him feel lightheaded and odd. He could only hang around outside, looking at the arches with an empty sort of interest and sitting on a bench. Richie was supposed to meet him here, he thought, looking at his watch and running over the plans. 

His mind started collapsing into the routine flurry. Is Richie standing him up? Did Mike decide to stay in New York? Is this all some elaborate joke? Had Eddie just made it all up? Is everything okay? His mind kept supplying them at a rapid fire pace. 

The thought was interrupted by a shout, coming from behind him.

Eddie whipped his head around to see Richie and Mike, holding hands like lovers and pounding the cobblestone.

“Eds!” Richie shouted again, and his pace sped up. His unoccupied hand flew to his hat, desperately trying to keep it in place.

“Richie, slow down! You’re gonna run into someone!” Eddie yelled, wincing as Richie nearly mowed someone over with all of his enthusiasm. 

In no time at all, the pair got to the bench, with Mike trailing behind and keeping a safe distance. Richie leaned over the back of it, his hands clutching the metal frame with more intensity than his easygoing gait would let on.

“Eddie, have you had lunch? Because Mike over here is hungry as a horse!” Richie exclaimed as he grabbed Mike’s arm to pull him closer into the fray. 

Eddie stood up properly, nervously wiping the sweat off of his palms and onto his pants, before looking up to make eye contact with both of the men before him.

“Nice to see you two, again. I’m a bit hungry too, what are you thinking?” Eddie rambled, even though he had already eaten. He figured, in the back of his mind, that he could play the nagging game and get Richie to eat a little bit too. They shared a look, some joint understanding, and Eddie took a little bit of quiet pleasure in the fact that he finally shared something with Richie that Mike from Maine wasn’t privy to.

“We definitely need to get some food in Richie, that’s for sure,” Mike said, slapping Richie on the back, totally missing the moment between Eddie and Richie.

“God, Mikey, you nag like my mother,” Richie said, a perfect reflection. Something dropped in Eddie’s stomach, like in that moment, he lost some small, precious jewel.

Mike just responded with a throaty laugh, deep and gorgeous. It sounded a bit like home, even though it was new to Eddie. He could see why Richie was so romanced, so nearly lured back to Maine. 

“So, uh, where do we want to stop by for lunch?” Eddie asked, feeling a bit like he had interrupted something, even though he was as much a part of this as anyone else.

“Do they sell hot dogs in the building? Because it isn’t a trip to New York if you don’t chow down on some dog,” Richie yelped, loud enough to let some of his nervousness shine through. Eddie and Mike shared a look, a quiet one of apprehension. It was a weird moment of friendship, one that tripped Eddie up a bit. 

“Sounds good to me,” Mike said, breaking the momentary contact with Eddie as he began to lean into a hearty walk into the train station, followed by Richie then Eddie in a line.

For a moment, Eddie saw them in profile: three men, in three different suits, walking on the stone steps, all a little bit in love and on the brink of disaster. As they made their way inside, Eddie fought the absurd feeling of smallness that crushed him. People walked around them, moving in hordes like flies- directionless but en masse. Eddie could barely pay attention to the action, his attention was so split.

There was simply so much to look at, from the crying girl in a wedding dress to Richie, buying those hot dogs and flirting a little bit with the saleswoman, to Mike, looking at Richie in his New York environment with an appraising eye.

His attention was only centered when Mike sidled over to him, pulling him to the wall next to the stand.

“Eddie, right?” Mike asked, screaming faked nonchalance. 

“Yeah. How long have you known him?” Eddie asked, casting a cursory glance at Richie’s back, hunched over a bit as he continued to banter with the person behind the counter.

“Since we were _kids_ ,” Mike responded, hushed like he was shocked. 

“What was he like?” Eddie asked, despite knowing that it was the forbidden question.

“Loud. Brazen. Angry. Everything, I guess. He was everything, back then,” Mike said, his voice carrying the tones and richness of a violin playing a sad song.

“What is he now?”

“Everything. Less angry, more sad, but still everything.”

“I understand,” Eddie responded, feeling weak and exhausted. He knew that feeling like it was a second skin, these days.

“I have pictures,” Mike said, his voice now a bit more gleeful than forlorn. 

“Please, I beg of you, share them. I need all the blackmail material I can get.”

Mike whipped out his wallet, opened it up and rifled through some pockets and plastic barriers, before pulling out a picture behind a picture. It was some faded snapshot, of a young Mike, a young Richie, and someone else.

“Is that Stan?” Eddie asked, not really looking at the dark haired hurricane in the center, the one with the thick glasses and stormy hair. He was instead focused on the third boy, his face half obscured by his own arm. He had sandy hair and Band Aids splattered across his body like paint stains. 

“Yeah. Does Richie talk about him at all?” Mike asked, his voice careful and measured.

“Not a lot. I hear whispers, sometimes.”

“Huh,” Mike muttered, looking down at the floor. Eddie opened his mouth, ready to ask more, but Richie interrupted by bustling into the middle of them, trying to carry three hot dogs with two hands.

“Are you guys ready to get this show on the road?” Richie asked, practically spilling the other two hot dogs on Mike and Eddie. Eddie definitely got a mustard stain on his white button down, but he was a bit too fond of Richie in the moment to complain about it.

“You know it, Trashmouth,” Mike said, already moving. Eddie shot a look at Richie, at this _Trashmouth_ from Maine, and Eddie wondered for the 1000th time that afternoon if he was going to cave and hop on that train and ride off into forever with this midnight cowboy.

Judging by Richie’s face, looking as if it was trapped in some other time, it looked like the answer was going to be a tearful “yes”.

Nonetheless, he waded through the river of the train station, swimming through people and carefully skating over mysterious puddles. Somewhere, a machine let out a ding, and Mike moved a little bit faster, and it hit Eddie that the train was leaving soon, and that Richie might be on it.

Soon, they hit a clearing, the three of them, hot dogs in hand, in from of train 33B, as the doors were just about to open. Eddie slyly threw his away, and Richie inhaled it. Only Mike took pause, looking over the scene with weary eyes. He had the eyes of an old man, but the face of someone with his entire life ahead of him, and Eddie wondered what the hell happened in Maine that made them this way.

He wondered, for a second, if Stan was even worse. Even more mysterious, with an impeccable fashion sense and the aroma of a smothered flame.

There was the squeal of a trains slowing into the tracks, drawing their eyes. 

“You ready, Trashmouth?” Mike asked, voice soft and sweet, like milk and honey. Richie merely fluttered his eyes closed, and sucked in a deep breath. Eddie felt trepidation thrum against his bones, wondering whether he was going to just succumb to the black hole of his past, or clutch onto New York with weakened hands.

“I’m not Trashmouth anymore, Mike. I can’t leave with you.”

Eddie felt like he’d been punched in the stomach. He wasn’t ready for this, his mind screamed, he hadn’t prepared for the possibility that Richie would actually follow through.

“What about Stan?” Mike asked, his voice quiet and terribly sad.

“What about him?” Richie asked, and Eddie noticed the scratchiness of his voice, the way his eyes were rimmed with pink.

“He’s coming home next week. I wanted you to be there, Rich. He needs you to be there.”

“Why didn’t you tell me that?” Richie said, his voice broken and emotion, his eyes wide and mirror-like as the tears started to brim closer to the front. Eddie felt like a voyeur, watching this quiet moment, filled with history he didn’t know. 

“It was supposed to be a surprise. A classic reunion, the Red Balloon Survivors.”

Something flashed in Richie’s eyes at that, and his shoulders started shaking, and he stepped closer to Mike, the only thing between them was Mike’s hot dog, creating a makeshift barrier.

“Stan can come here, and we can all go on some big road trip to New Mexico. Find a small town, live-” Richie began, sounding as if he’d thought about it before.

“Richie, we can’t break away from Maine. Our blood is in that soil, we’ve etched our names in the trees. You can’t change that, you can’t run away and reverse it. Come back, with me by your side. You, me, and Stan, we’ll rebuild it, fix what the town broke.”

Richie began to cry in earnest, arching over into Mike’s chest. Eddie could only watch helplessly. 

A last call bell sounded, and Richie came back up, looking tall but hollow. 

“Take him to New York. I’ll be waiting here.”

“Richie-”

“Go. Go to Derry, get Stan, and come back here. I can’t walk onto a train and abandon Richie Tozier just yet. I need time,” Richie said, taking a step back, and then another, until he was by Eddie’s side.

Mike took a step back, still looking at Richie with sad, old eyes, before turning around and stepping into the train.

There was another long, banshee-like screech as the train began moving, and Richie’s head followed the train until it disappeared into the nothingness hidden behind the arch. 

Eddie put his arm around Richie’s waist, as he seemed to collapse into a pile of tears and memory, shaking and tensing while Eddie can only helplessly murmur assurances into the bustling, suffocating air.

“I- I think I… I need a drink,” Richie stuttered.

“I’ve got you, Richie. I’ve got you,” Eddie reassured, pulling Richie back up and leading him out of that clearing, frantically scanning his mind for a bar, and panicking when one couldn’t arise.

“Thank you,” Richie muttered into Eddie’s shoulder, and for that moment, it was all inexplicably worth it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Y'all thought this was abandoned? Hell no. I'm just slow as FUCK. 
> 
> Hope you enjoy! Comment/kudos, and have a good day!!


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> they get drunk and fight. Things kinda go to shit

The bar Eddie found, on a map on a brochure in a dingy little metal stand, feels a bit like an old book: musty and containing more knowledge than is comprehensible. The bartenders would run a rag over the counters, but the dust never really went away, it just speckled back into the once-shiny surfaces.

Eddie only really noticed this because he was busy staring at the bar, trying to keep his eyes away from Richie’s face, looking torn apart with grief and hope and every other possible feeling. Eddie was nursing a burgundy, tame glass of wine, and Richie kept running his finger over the rim of his scotch glass. 

“So…” Richie said, breaking the rich, exhausted silence with a sigh and a downcast gaze.

“Yeah?” Eddie asked, intent on not being the one to start a fight.

“You really got the full news on me, didn’t ya?” Richie asked back, refusing to make any eye contact with Eddie, instead staring at the wall across from them.

“Not really. Your life is even more of a mystery, quite honestly,” Eddie replied, sheepish and young. He could see it in the reflection of the glass, in the hum of conversations behind them.

“Good.”

There was another beat of silence, crescendoing in the air between them.

“My childhood was… abnormally boring,” Eddie said, taking a contemplative sip of his wine, looking like deep garnet as it swished in the glass.

“What do you mean?” Richie asked, like he wasn’t totally focused on it.

“Lot of time alone, honestly. Other kids were so dirty and sweaty and I just wanted to be clean, you know? Couldn’t use pencils because of the lead dust, had to be careful because of the sharp edges of paper. Lots of being careful. The one time, and I mean the singular moment where I broke a rule, I tried to sneak out, and I fell down the stairs and broke my arm. Got yelled at for _days_ , never snuck out again.”

“Damn. Who made you so scared, Eds?” Richie asked, finally looking at Eddie’s face with a face that resembled feeling.

“My mom. She thought I was sick, and then I thought I was sick. I was just terrified of getting sicker. Being scared you’re going to die at any moment is a weird way to grow up,” Eddie said, with a voice turning more raw.

“Yeah, it is. How did she deal with any of your girlfriends?” Richie asked.

“Never had any. Didn’t like girls, and my mom would’ve exploded if I brought home a boy, that would’ve been unhealthy, in her mind. For my mind, my body, my eternal soul. God would’ve sent something down,” he said, swirling his glass around.

“Was she a crazy Christian, or something? I knew my fair share of those” _in Maine_. He didn’t add that addendum, but it was undeniably present.

“When it was convenient.”

“What do you mean?”

“She drank, sometimes. Didn’t tell me, but I knew. Big hypocrite, too. All sorts of sins that I would’ve been killed for, you know?” Eddie said, punctuating it with a bitter laugh.

“Glad you got out of that home,” Richie said, shooting a wry smile toward Eddie’s drink, hanging near his lips.

“I didn’t, not really. She owns my apartment, she furnished it. Every time I get my paycheck, it goes to her bank account. It’s one of those situations, if that makes any sense.”

“It doesn’t,” Richie said, brushing a piece of curly hair behind an ear and shifting on the bar stool to face Eddie with furrowed brows.

“What part?” Eddie asked, breathing out his nose and trying to put the energy in a tight smile. 

“You putting up with that bullshit. She’s supposed to love you, to be your mom, but instead she just took shit from you. Your money, your fucking childhood… you’re an adult. Cut her loose,” Richie said, wagging around his drink a little bit as a fire seemed to light up in his eyes.

“That’s kind of hard to do… she owns my apartment, she’s the one who got me my job. Not to mention that I love her. I mean, she’s my _mom_. I can’t just cut that loose,” Eddie said, his eyes widening as panic started to burn behind his eyes.

“Cutting your life out of your body is easier than you think it is,” Richie muttered into his glass, darkly and with enough anger in his words that Eddie felt the panic burn ever brighter.

“How do you do it, then?” Eddie asked, taking a sip of his wine with pursed, tight lips. He heard a siren come blaring past the door, casting a momentary flashing light on the back of Richie’s neck.

“Leave. Just walk away, and keep walking. Introduce yourself under something different, and shed the layers of whatever went down. Build a life around what you have, not what you had. Soon, all of the shit is just a memory, and you’re free. At least until it comes back, which it will,” Richie said, and Eddie could see Mike flash behind his eyes. 

“What do I do then?” Eddie asked, trying to probe into Richie’s mind, into his escape.

“Hell if I know.”

Then, a silence. A question ricocheted against the wine soaked walls of Eddie’s brain, until he finally let it slip from his cherry stained lips.

“What would’ve happened if Stan was the one who showed up at your doorstep?”

Richie tensed, cringing over the bar stool into something simultaneously more stone and more human than Eddie had ever seen him. His face went tight, and then he pulled himself back up again, as if he’s being held together by a fraying thread.

“Something different would’ve happened, for sure. Something different would’ve happened if you showed up in Derry, or anything else. Things are different and it doesn’t- it doesn’t _mean_ anything,” Richie ranted, and the shaking in his skin came back, the twitch of someone who was trying to get the jitters out of his body.

“What would’ve happened, huh? If I were in Derry,” Eddie asked, clenching his fist around the stem of his glass.

“Something different,” Richie said in response.

“Something good?” Eddie asked, trying to transplant himself into the scraps of information he knew about the town, about the time Richie spent there.

“Something _different_ ,” Richie said again, refusing to go down without a fight.

“I don’t know what happened there, Richie. I don’t think I’ll ever really know, even if I read a million books on the subject, I don’t _know_. Help me out. I can’t help you, or make anything better for you unless you just- let me in. Let me into your life. Tell me stories and tell me you want me in your life and just… help me out,” Eddie said, getting lost in the orange haze of vulnerability, letting himself and all of his fears go loose into the air.

“I don’t think I know how to do that, Eds. But I do,” he said, flailing.

“You do what?”

“I want you in my life. I really do. You’re kind and funny and pretty and I like you so much, and I really want you in my life! I just don’t know how to give you what you want,” Richie said, his hands beginning to shake around his glass.

“What do I want?” Eddie asked.

“Solidity. Comfort. Stuff that I can’t give you,” Richie said, and Eddie could only respond with a heady silence.

“Do you ever think you’re going to get married, Richie?” Eddie asked, not truly knowing where he was going.

“Yeah. To some rich guy, like Patrick.”

“From the party?” Eddie asked, vaguely remembering the face.

“Yeah, from the party.”

“Huh,” Eddie said, wondering what made him different. Richie could give forever to some rich man he probably hated, but not “kind and funny and pretty” Eddie?

“I feel like I could buy freedom with that kind of money. Like, I’d have a ring on my finger and a home to go to, but that kind of money is international money. Plane rides to forever money. Restaurants with great food money. Marrying someone I love is a whole different kind of imprisonment. I’d have to love them enough to be willing to stay there until I die.”

“Anyone in mind?” Eddie asked with a lilting voice.

“Depends. If it’s a big ranch in New Mexico, and it’s just me and Stan and the stars? I could live like that. That’s my exception. Mike and the rest of the family could visit whenever they want, and it would be a whole new life.”

“Why Stan?” Eddie asked, trying to keep the bitterness out of his voice.

There was another beat of silence, and Eddie could see the story play out deep behind Richie’s eyes, like a tape on a lightning fast rewind.

“I grew up with him. We are two halves of one soul, we’re so close and tangled together. I know you won’t ever understand that, but it’s the way I live every single day.”

“I wouldn’t understand? What does _that_ mean?” he asked, suddenly angry. Angry like a fire lit under him.

“Let’s go home,” said Richie.

“Sure, I’ll walk you, but you know what? You better tell me what the _fuck_ that meant, fine?”

“I don’t want to-”

“I- I hate this. I hate saying this. But you know what? I don’t care if you want to anymore. My feelings are as real as yours, Richie.”

“Eds, you know I didn’t mean it like that,” he said, picking up his jacket and shoving it on with restrained anger, and Eddie followed suit.

“Do I know that you mean it like that? Do I?” Eddie said as he started walking out, and he could hear the rustle of a hurried RIchie behind him, trying to catch up by his side. Soon, with a long, breathless sigh, Richie managed to catch onto Eddie’s arm, keeping pace with Eddie.

“You should! Jesus, Eddie, you have to know- we’re different! Fundamentally, absolutely different. There are things you will never understand about how I feel and the life I’ve led. You have to get it, Spaghetti-”

“Don’t call me that,” Eddie sniped, his voice smooth as glass and angry as a jagged edge.

“-you haven’t made a blood pact with someone, you haven’t snuck out of your house to ride your bikes around and talk about the future, you’ve never been in love,” Richie said, and at the last word, Eddie’s vision turned magenta and he spinned around, barely absorbing the way that Richie rammed into him.

“I’ve been in love,” Eddie said, near screaming and a moment away from tears. 

“I doubt it,” Richie said, shoving past Eddie and knocking his shoulder against the other, his voice sharp as an arrow.

“Don’t tell me who I am, or what I feel!” said Eddie, as he spinned around to look at Richie’s back as it marched down the pavement.

“You don’t know yourself, Eddie,” Richie said, and Eddie had to run up to catch him and continue the fight. They kept their track towards the apartment building despite the shouting and the arguing.

“Oh, like you know yourself? Have you decided on your name? Trashmouth, or Richie, or Richard, or anything else? You can twist my name however you want to, give me nickname after nickname, but I am and will always be Eddie Kaspbrak. Who are you, huh? How are you more real than I am?”

“That’s not what I said,” said Richie haughtily. Eddie rolled his eyes, but the movement seemed to take over his whole body.

“What did you say, then?” Eddie said in reply, his arms moving quickly as he tried to get the energy and the anger out of his body through his fingers.

“That you don’t understand me. And you won’t, no matter how much time we spend on walks and hallway small talk. You won’t, so stop trying, okay?” ranted Richie.

Their apartment loomed one block away. Eddie took one step after another, trying to get closer and closer to the building, avoiding the dark clouds that hung around his ears, making every step more muddled than the last.

“Fine. You can go and find a wealthy husband that you hate, and chase some memory of someone you loved until you’re just a shell. You might already be one.”

“Good!” Richie said as they reached the entrance of the building, punctuating his word with an aggressive opening of the door, “and you can keep walking and spending hour after hour doing absolutely nothing, until your mom forces you to marry some girl who is just like her. Then you’ll know what being a shell is like, you piece of _shit_ ,” Richie said, taking one step after another up the stairs. Eddie let out a big, angry sigh, feeling the anger rip through him. One more hallway, then Richie would be out of his sight.

“Here’s my door, Eds,” Richie said, unlocking his door and refusing to look Eddie in the eye.

“Don’t call me-” the door closed with a slam “-that.”

Eddie took a deep breath in, then a dark sigh out. He stared at Richie’s door, big and white and blank like a canvas.

Next, he started walking, moving down the hallway with false confidence, his mind still on that door. He went to sleep, in his bed, the one his mom ordered for him, with that door flashing in his mind. Nothing but the outside of Richie’s eclectic, weird apartment.

 _Fuck_ , Eddie thought, not letting the tears slip from his eyes as he drifted off into restless sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey guys, thanks for reading! please comment, and hit me up on tumblr! Send me requests, share your thoughts! Hope y'all are having a good day!!!


	8. Chapter 8

Eddie woke up that morning feeling nothing but sore. His head hurt like hell, his legs felt empty and painful, and his heart felt crooked in his chest: bent and titled, like it didn’t quite fit. 

He woke up to the dinging of his alarm clock, and the knocking on his door. Then, there was the sound of a shuffle, and Eddie fought the screaming of his body as he pulled himself out of bed. He walked like a zombie to his door, his vision marked by grey flecks.

He was so _tired_ , in that all-consuming way of someone who just went through hell and only had a hangover to show for it. 

Before he could reach to open the door, his feet scuffed across the thin pages of a newspaper, shocking him out of some of his fatigue. He jumped back, before bending down with wooden joints to pick up the newspaper.

He didn’t have a subscription, he remembered, he preferred to buy at the stands outside his apartment. Even though some of the pages were torn near the bottom, the front page and attached note was clear.

The headline: Patrick Hockstetter, Socialite, Elopes in Jamaica.

The note beneath, in curly handwriting: We both said some things. This future of mine eloped in Jamaica. Forgive me?

Eddie hated how easily this forgiveness came to him, how easily all the words sunk away from his cracked bones, healing over with the curly, magical, wand of ink and healing solution. 

Eddie’s blood was too thin to hold a grudge.

He took the note, folding it up and holding it in his hands. He gets dressed as quickly as possible, into clothes that is mother bought. He shrugged his jacket on, getting the feeling that the sun was right on the horizon. 

With his clothes on, and the note folded prettily in his jacket pocket, he practically skated down the hallways, his feet light on the dusty carpet. He thumped his way down the stairs, feeling the wind on his heels and letting the air of the morning take him. It felt one step away from a fairytale, like all the slights and the curses of the night before had been charmed away.

He arrived at the door of Chez Richie Tozier, and brought his hand to the door, knocking with confidence. Richie opened it with flair and a sun-eyed smile. His shoulders hung a bit, the exhausted frame of his body not matching his exuberant face, but Eddie let it go unexamined.

“All forgiven?” he asked, remembering the yells and the condemnations and the swears that the two of them are too twisted to work together.

“All forgiven,” said Richie, like it was that simple.

“May I come in?”

“Why, yes,” he said, leaning into some British maid accent, making Eddie giggle a bit. Things were alright. Things could be alright.

He walked into the apartment, noting that since the last time he’d been in there, a glass vase had been smashed but not picked up, and two wrapped presents addressed to Richie, both with distinctly different wrappings. He wondered if they were from two different people. 

Richie drew his attention from that, however, by whipping out a champagne, the kind with thick-walled glass and a clear heaviness to it. Eddie looked to the trash, and recognized that there was wrapping paper in there too. Was this a gift? Were here more that he couldn’t see? The questions made him feel a bit crazy, like he was the insane one.

“Wanna toast to our delightful reunion?” Richie asked, pulling out a cork.

“I don’t know,” said Eddie as he remembered what happened the last time they drank together, “I’ve never gotten drunk before 5 in the afternoon.”

“There’s always a first time for everything,” said Richie, ducking his head and looking expectantly at Eddie. A single curl dropped down onto his forehead, and Eddie felt his own head nod, almost of its own volition.

“Champagne for breakfast? I’m in,” he said, walking into the kitchen proper, and smiling. He leaned into the joy, into the idea that things were _fine_ , goddammit. 

“Play something suspenseful? Heighten the moment?” Richie said, his freckles sticking out from the natural sunlight. Eddie felt like it was hard to speak, his eyes were too trapped on those freckles, those marks of humanity and fallibility. 

“Eddie! Eddie Spaghetti! If you don’t snap out of it, I’ll do the orchestrations,” said Richie.

“Fine,” he said, and he began humming some variation on some spooky classical piece his mom taught him how to do on the piano, and as the cork neared ever closer to the lip of the bottle, Richie pitched in his own “dum dums” for harmony.

Then, like a car speeding down the hallway, the cork popped, and a stream of sticky, bubbly champagne came shooting out of the bottle, making the pair of them laugh and sputter with panic, trying to move the spray over the sink. This laughter was natural, unbound and free, as they watched the fountain of bubbles calm down, until it had relaxed into something drinkable.

Looking at each other, wrought in odd poses over the sink, it only made them laugh harder, long through the shaky pouring of the champagne into Richie’s mismatched mugs, all the way through the first few sips.

Thing were going to be okay.

-

The champagne itself was weirdly tart, but it still made for a good way to start the morning, lounging around on Richie’s “chaise longue” and giggling about nothing in particular. There was a rumbling Eddie’s chest, something topsy turvy that kept spinning and flipping.

“So, what else haven’t you done?” Richie asked before taking a especially graceful sip.

“All sorts of things. What about you, though? You seem so adventurous, I couldn’t imagine something that you haven’t done,” Eddie said. He felt inexplicably nervous, thinking about all the things he hasn’t done, from mundane (he’s never stood on a table) to the more serious (he’s never had his first kiss), the conversation felt oddly exposing. 

“This is embarrassing, but there is something that I definitely haven’t done…” said Richie as he leaned in, his face and tone looking truly conspiratorial, “I have never been in a library.”

Eddie launched into laughter.

“Wha- how? How have you? In your childhood, in every- high school? You- you’ve never even set _foot_ in-” Eddie sputtered, laughing so hard he couldn’t finish a sentence before falling into the giggles again. The champagne definitely helped.

“I told you it’d be embarrassing!” yelped Richie, laughing a bit himself.

“Well, wanna go to one? I have some of my writing in the library. You can check it out,” said Eddie. There was a nervous glint to his voice, coming from the knowledge that this would be the first time that Richie got to see what Eddie actually did for a living.

He was, to be frank, a little embarrassed by it. Being the “Concerned Citizen” author who just synthesized other studies was a bit embarrassing, after all. He didn’t really feel like he did anything, since it was his mom’s gig above all else. 

What mattered, though, was the paycheck he got at the end of the day, right from his mother’s hands into their joint bank account. She did all the agent/publishing/promoting work, and he did the writing part. He figured that at the very least, Richie would have to be a little impressed at the sight of the words “by Eddie Kaspbrak” on the cover of the book. 

Eddie himself hadn’t even seen the published copy, at his mother’s recommendation (“it’s out in the world, sweetie! If you saw it yourself, you’d drive yourself crazy with wanting to fix any remaining issues. It’s for the best.”), so he could quietly add his own first to the list of activities for the day. 

“Put it in the books! Let’s go raise some hell at the library!” said Richie, and Eddie pushed down his fit of annoyance.

“We will not raise hell,” he said, a smidge too seriously. Richie flashed a fake smile, and rolled his eyes.

“I wasn’t going to, don’t worry. Can’t ruin Eddie Spaghetti’s reputation, after all.”

“Don’t call me- you know what? Let’s go. I’m done with my champagne,” said Eddie, and Richie held up one finger, down everything he had left, and then stood up. Eddie followed suit, and soon enough they were walking out the door, still in their casual outfits and with nothing more than a wallet on either of them.

-

The library closest to their apartment felt an awful lot like a cave, with its tall, stone ceilings and reverberating echo. Eddie pulled Richie over to the front desk, letting the liquid courage sink into his skin and give him the confidence to get through this much.

“Do you know where I can find ‘Concerned Citizen’ by Eddie Kaspbrak?” he asked, ending his sentence with an overjoyed look at Richie. 

“With a K in front of the last name?” asked the librarian, his voice soft and kind and hsi name tag bearing the name “Ben”. Eddie felt an affinity to him, a sort of immediate trust.

“Yep,” said Richie, pitching in with absolute glee. 

“Kaspbrak, Kaspbrak…” muttered Ben as he shuffled to a spot on the counter, rifling through a stack of cards before happening on the right one.

“I’ve got a Concerned Citizen by Kaspbrak on the second floor, in the health section. That’ll be to your right,” he said , and Eddie gave him an easy smile. 

“Fantastic. We’ll be on our way.”

They walked up a flight of stairs and traveled over the carpet floors, looking for the sign for “Health”. 

“Jesus Christ, this place is like a labyrinth! How is this fun for you?” Richie asked, and Eddie was too distracted by the feeling of Richie holding on to Eddie’s wrist to help guide that he didn’t bother to answer. Despite all of their sudden baggage, Eddie still couldn’t help but be distracted by Richie, with his starry eyes and sloping shoulders. Merely two seconds later, the Health section became visible, and Richie almost leaped with joy, if the tug on Eddie’s wrist was anything to go by.

They navigated their way to the H-L bookshelf, and Eddie took on the job of running his fingers along book spines, trying to catch his own. Richie only watched, looking almost childlike in his anticipation.

“Kappa, Karpathian… Kaspbrak!” he said, pulling out his book and holding it up in victory. Richie stared at it like it was the seventh wonder of the world.

“Lemme see! Lemme see!” yelped Richie, and Eddie tossed the hardcover book to him, for once not worrying about safety. Granted, it was still in the back of his mind. When the book was halfway through the air, he decided that if the book knocked Richie in the head and gave him a bruise, he’d have to get him some bandages from the drugstore across the street.

With none of these worries, Richie grabbed the book and examined the cover, it went from the top of the pale blue to the bottom, and at the end of his scan, his face dropped.

“What’s wrong? Is there a typo?” asked Eddie, and he _knew_ something would go wrong, he’s dumb _dumbdumbdumb_ for doing this, for going against his mom’s advice and-

“It doesn’t say that you wrote this,” said Richie. Eddie’s mind halted in its own confusion.

“It says it’s written by Sonia Kaspbrak.”

“Th-that’s my mom,” said Eddie, his heart dropping and his mind whirring at lightning speed.

“I mean, your last name is on it, if that’s any consolation,” said Richie, his face looking like he’d rather be anywhere else. Eddie’s face crumpled, and Richie dropped the book, racing over to Eddie to catch him in a hug as Eddie started to cry softly against his shoulder.

“Why? I’m so confused. What’s going on? Richie, what’s-”

“Shhh, I don’t know what’s going on, Eds. I can tell you what it looks like, I mean, from an outsider’s perspective it kind of looks like… uhh, it looks pretty bad. Did you know that she’d take credit for it?”

“What do you think?”

“Yeah, that was a dumb question,” said Richie, rubbing Eddie’s back in the calmest way possible.

Eddie pulled away, swiping away at his tear stained cheeks. He looked at Richie, right in the eyes, taking a moment to find comfort in his steady, if empty, gaze.

“This is-” he sniffled, before continuing, “-a problem for Tomorrow Eddie. Distract me. L-let’s do another first, alright?”

Richie’s eyebrows furrowed, and for a second he looked so deeply concerned that Eddie wanted to fall right back into tears again. He resisted the urge, even if it took every single muscle in his body.

“Have you ever been to the dollar store?” asked Richie, and his voice was so helpless and strained that Eddie almost wanted to comfort _him_. Instead, Eddie just shook his head and let himself be led down the stairs and out the door, still wiping away stray tears with the sleeve of his jacket.

-

The dollar store was bright and colorful and everything the library wasn’t. Noise poured out of every corner, and the volume of pure artifice took Eddie’s breath away. There was nothing in that store but shells- shells of art, of music, of entertainment. There was nothing beneath their exteriors, nothing at all that constituted as substance.

It was absolutely beautiful.

They fooled around, feeling like rowdy kids as they pretended to be shocked southern belles who emoted by batting the cheap wooden fans on a stand, and they bounced a red ball between them for what felt like hours as they talked about Sally Tomato and his recent news. They had reached their peak levels of fun at the shelf of cheap plastic masks, masks of tigers and lions and bears (“oh my!” joked Richie, laughing his ass off).

“Oh, god. I remember shops like this back from home,” said Richie, and Eddie’s ears perked up at the very mention of Richie’s past, and Richie continued. “I would steal the dumbest shit… candy, pencils, anything I could. Me and my friends would team up, make it like some epic heist.”

“Really? I’ve never stolen anything,” said Eddie, running his thumb along the thin plastic edge of a tiger mask.

“Other than a couple of hearts,” said Richie, smiling even wider at Eddie’s blushing face.

“I wouldn’t think so… I haven’t even had my first kiss yet, so…” Eddie trailed off, and Richie looked at him with that peculiar stare, the one that Eddie didn’t know how to decode. There was a period of silence, just Eddie looking at the way that Richie’s lips were pursed like he was considering something, and Eddie could only hope that it was something kiss-related. Eddie realized, a second too late, that he was probably staring too obviously at Richie’s lips, and his blush only deepened. So Eddie brought his eyes to Richie’s forehead, a good, neutral place, before finally putting all his focus on the tiger mask that still sat in his hand.

“Wanna steal that?” asked Richie, and Eddie felt like such a _kid_ , pining after a guy like this. He felt so young, and Richie had so much behind his eyes that Eddie just couldn’t begin to understand, and he wanted, so deeply and intensely, to be closer to Richie, physically and emotionally.

“Yeah,” he said. 

“Put the mask on and start walking. Don’t stop,” said Richie, and Eddie felt some mix of nervous and adventurous and attraction deep in his stomach, so he followed the directions with fumbling hands. The mask slipped on, and with shaky steps like a baby deer’s, he started walking.

From behind him, a few seconds later, there was a crash and a yelp that sounded distinctly like Richie’s voice. Eddie kept walking, but his let himself have one look over his shoulder.

Richie was on the floor, making noises of pain, and _everybody_ was looking at him.

Which meant that they weren’t looking at Eddie, so Eddie quickened his pace.

Soon, he was out the door, the fresh wind hitting his mask and making an odd noise, and he pulled it off. His smile was making it chafe and move around too much, so he just let his smile free. He stood by the wall outside the store, waiting for Richie to come out, and when he did, it was with a mask of his own in hand.

“Do you know how to walk from here to the apartment?” asked Richie, his face totally alight with excitement and adventure, reminding Eddie that he was so far gone and charmed for this guy that it physically hurt.

“Yeah?”

“Good, because we are gonna have to run. I was not smooth about stealing this one,” said Richie, and Eddie looked over Richie’s shoulder, and saw a peeved salesperson walking to the glass door.

He took off running, and judging by the pounds of nice shoes of pavement behind him, Richie followed.

-

They had arrived at the door of the apartment, breathing hard and laughing in long, deep sighs. Somewhere on those starry, New York sidewalks, they had linked their hands together, and they’d forgotten to let go, so as they raced up the stairs of the apartment, their sweaty hands slid against each other, giving Eddie some weird sense of summer-ish glee.

They had stopped at Richie’s apartment, panting and leaning against the wall. Eddie stole a look to Richie, and wondered if this happiness could last for forever. Richie turned his head in Eddie’s direction before he had the chance to look away, and they looked into each other’s eyes, still breathing heavily.

Richie blinked, his eyes going blank for a second, and Eddie stilled, he could feel something coming. Whether it was the sun or a storm, he couldn’t tell.

Richie took a step forward and opened his door, and he took a stiff step into his apartment before turning back around, looking back to Eddie, still frozen like a statue.

He took a harsh step forward and brought his hand to Eddie’s jaw, running his thumb over Eddie’s cheek with so much fondness that when his eyes quietly asked for permission, Eddie nodded with vigor. His eyes closed, and Richie met his lips, a warm, breathless press that warmed his heart so much that it felt like it would burst out of his chest. Eddie brought his own hand to Richie’s arm, holding tight as the kiss deepened. Then, Richie pulled apart, breathing against his lips.

Eddie opened his eyes, and looked at Richie, at the lock of hair that fell onto his forehead, at his wide eyes, sparkling under the hallway lights.

Richie took a step back, and smiled, before muttering something that Eddie couldn’t quite hear (his mind was caught in this rosy-magenta daze, which made it pretty hard to focus), and he ducked into his apartment and closed the door, leaving Eddie lovestruck and alone in the hallway.

Eddie put his fingers to his lips, taking a moment to savor that Richie was _there_ a mere couple of seconds ago. He smiled, and he decided that things would, without a doubt, be okay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is my christmas gift to myself. Give me more gifts by commenting!!!


	9. Chapter 9

Eddie woke up that morning to sun in his eyes and the lingering imprint of Richie’s kiss on his lips. He smiled up into his ceiling, his eyes closing before opening again to take in the day. He wriggled around in his bed a little bit, as if to test that he was awake, that the morning was this good, this _kind_ on his too-sensitive skin.

He rolled around, and the sheets enveloped him, like a warm, soft cocoon. Happiness felt really good, really fresh. He finally decided to face the day, throwing the sheets to the floor and soaking in the sunshine like a sponge.

Then, there was a harsh knock at the door, three unapologetic raps.

“Edward? Are you in there?” screeched his mom, her voice muffled through the door. He scowled, but even this couldn’t really break through the joy he felt blooming inside him. He put on a nearby bathrobe, and walked to the door with a new confidence in his step. 

He swung open the door, not even deigning to give his mother a warning. 

“Edward! I’m so glad you’re okay,” she said, rushing forward to trap in in a tight hug that he didn’t return.

“Hello,” he said, simply and flatly, as if he refused to even offer her the comfort of emotion.

“Eddie-kins, what’s wrong?” she asked, pulling away, but still keeping her hold tight on his shoulders. Her hands were worryingly close to his neck,he realized, and he resisted the urge to step away, knowing that it would only make everything worse.

“I went to the library yesterday, to show a friend the book I wrote,” he said, and he held his chin high, refusing to betray the deep hurt it had caused him.

His mother, on the other hand, leaned into the emotions that broadcasted across her face. Tears welled up in her eyes, and her hands moved from Eddie’s shoulder’s to his cheeks, sandwiching his face between them. His glare remained as stoney as ever.

“It wasn’t my _choice_ , darling! If I had the option to put your name on that book, you know I would’ve. It’s just- the publishers, they… it was out of my control. I’m sorry you had to find out like that!”

“Don’t act like that,” he said.

“Like what?”

“Like this hurts you as much as it hurts me,” he said, finally wrenching her hands away from his face with more strength than he knew he was capable of, “Because I was humiliated. You took my work, the stuff that I did so much research for and-”

“I know how hard you worked! Every penny of that goes towards this apartment!” she said, and he could tell by the helpless, almost animalistic look in her eyes, that she was losing control and she knew it. 

“Well that’s a shame, because I’ve never decided where a _cent_ of that money went. It was always my work, and your decisions. I need to make some decisions myself, I need to be free!” he said, relishing for a moment in the way that his mother’s demeanor changed,in the way she stilled, her eyes widening.

“Are you saying… that you want me? Your mother, your benefactress, the only one who believes in you, out of your life?”

That’s not true, Eddie thought, Richie believes in me. This gave him a streak of strength, a strong courage that just emanated from his balled fists. 

“Yes.”

Then silence. He felt fire behind his eyes, felt stronger than Goliath, than anyone or anything. She looked still, almost robotic.

“When you realize your mistake, call me. Otherwise? I’m cutting you off,” she said, her voice cold and calculating. Eddie felt a fever of confidence in his face, the feeling of victory lifting him up.

“Don’t hold your breath,” he said, playing into the spite that he’s been burning with since day one, “Now get out of my apartment.”

With slitted eyes, his mother turned around, and left. He closed the door behind her, and smiled even wider. He just destroyed his manipulative mother, and his only armor was a maroon bathrobe. He took some deep, panting breaths, before inspiration lit up his mind.

He _has_ to tell Richie about it, has to revel in this victory with him. So in a hurry, he got dressed, not even worrying about tucking his shirt in as he raced out of the door with sparks under his feet.

-

The hallways passed by him in a creamy lavender blur, the feeling of absolute _freedom_ lifted him up, making him feel like he was soaring through a sunrise sky. 

When he reached Richie’s apartment, that lovely place where everything happens and possibility lurks beneath every knockoff item and stray receipt, he felt absolutely heavenly.

He knocked on the door, mimicking some simple tune and it’s beats. No response. He knocked again, no response. As his heart rate sped up, so did the speed of his knocks, until they were practically matched to each other.

“Oh my god, shut _up_ ,” said a voice from behind him, and he whirled around to see an oily haired neighbor, clearly a teen and clearly bored out of her mind.

“Excuse me?”

“Loverboy left, like, half an hour ago. He talks to himself, sometimes, and these walls are thin,” she said in a chilled monotone. 

“Was he saying anything specific?” Eddie asked, hoping for some clue to where his friend/crush/lover(?) was.

“Something about books. Writing them or reading, I don’t know. Books and mistakes, those were the two big words,” she said, not knowing nearly how much she was helping a stray man in love. Eddie wanted to hug her, but settled for smiling instead: he knew _exactly_ where Richie was.

“Thank y-”

“Don’t get too optimistic with that guy, though. He knows how to use them and lose them,” she said, and Eddie felt his eyes widen, but his mind flashed back to that night at the bar, and the man that Richie wanted to be with.

“Yeah, when they’re absurdly wealthy. But he’s moved on, he’s found someone he likes for something other than money,” said Eddie.

“Sure,” replied the girl, unimpressed. “Things can change.”

Eddie felt emboldened by this, and turned on his heel, starting down the hallway.

“Good luck,” he heard her say, but he never detected its cynical, sarcastic tone.

Then, he was out of that building, back on the bustling streets of his city. The sun was on full display, even if it sometimes hid behind skyscrapers. But Eddie didn’t even take time to notice, because the world just looked so good through rosy glasses, soaring and sliding through, hoping for the best and knowing that it was fate.

It seemed like only seconds until he arrived at the library, and now the tall arches and cool stone didn’t look intimidating, it looked grand and church-like. He walked in, waved hello to the librarian, and slid through the maze of the library, scanning around for that familiarly ruffled head of hair.

Then, in the fiction section, he saw Richie, sitting against a bookcase and thumbing through some book, chewing his lip. His sunglasses were pushed up past his forehead, keeping errant strands of hair from falling into his eyes. Eddie’s heart skipped a beat, because it was an absolutely perfect look for the day.

(However, Eddie didn’t notice some important things. For one, Richie was reading a Bill Denbrough book, an acquaintance they both shared. Richie also had deep bags under his eyes, and his position was more protective than cozy. Not to mention his red rimmed eyes, which the sunglasses were meant to cover up.)

“Hey there, stranger,” said Eddie, and it make Richie startle so violently that the shades fell from their precarious position on the crown of his head onto the tip of his nose. Richie pushed them up with a panicked, fidgety hand, and turned a bit more into himself.

“Hi, Eddie. I’m reading,” he said, a silent plea for Eddie to just _leave_ , to let go of it.

“I noticed,” said Eddie in response, and he started to move to sit down by Richie, but Richie stopped him by holding up a hand. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong, necessarily. Pretty fantastic. I got some good news,” said Richie, hoping that the sunglasses covered his lie well.

“What news?” Eddie asked, caught between excitement and deep concern.

“I’m getting married.”

“What?”

A silence hung in the air, and Eddie had the feeling that his lungs were being squeezed by some cruel hand (his mother? Richie? Stan?), and he had to put his energy into keep his knees from buckling.

“To Denbrough. He called me this morning,” Richie said, and he smiled a toothless smile, picture perfect but certainly not genuine.

“But I thought-”

“It doesn’t matter. I found someone,” said Richie, not without cruelty lingering in his voice. Eddie doubled his efforts to keep standing, albeit on weak feet. He felt like the world was suddenly turning too fast.

Richie curled in on himself a little bit more, and Eddie took a step back, desperately grasping for anything that he could say.

“Please leave? I’m reading,” said Richie, and with too-hot tears springing up in his eyes, Eddie took shaky steps out, feeling absolutely dazed. 

Once he was out of the library, he stumbled down the sidewalks, until he saw a payphone, and he knew what he had to do. He fumbled his pockets for loose change, and pulled it out. He walked into that tight, claustrophobic place, and numbly slipped the coins in. He dialed with a shaking hand, and picked up the phone.

“Hello?”

“Mom? I’m sorry. Can you please forgive me?”

-

Eddie fell back into his mother’s arms with resentment scratching angrily at his throat, but she always cared more about what he did than she did about what Eddie felt while he did it. She used the paycheck that he worked for to buy him a new suit, and it fit in a way that made him distinctly uncomfortable.

He saw Richie in hallways and in glimpses, and he notes that Richie while engaged is practically the same as Richie while spending time with his Derry friends: elusive and uncannily hard to be around. 

Eddie certainly tried. He offered to have tea with the couple, to put the past behind them and just be friends again, but Richie just looked at him with those sad, empty eyes, the ones that made Eddie feel so uncomfortable.

“Sorry, I’m busy,” he said, looking over Eddie’s shoulder.

The worst part was that Eddie couldn’t even hate Bill, who was so sweet and caring. He was full of light in a way that Eddie envied, and he obviously _cared_ about Richie. He was lovely at the party, and he was certainly a lovely fiance to someone who definitely deserved a lovely fiance. 

Eddie could look in the mirror and decide that he wasn’t as lovely. He could see the cowardice in the wrinkles around his eyes, the aged anxiety that couldn’t be scraped off his skin. There was none of that baggage on Bill, who had nothing but boyish charm hanging on his skin.

He started feeling just as lost as Richie looked. He would walk the streets, only now without any joy or direction. He would feel the worn soles of his feet drag on the worn pavement, and think that his mother should buy him new shoes, and then think that he was less alive than ever before.

He even found himself in front of TIffany’s, just like Richie in all of those stories. Eddie never got to see what his friend looked like when he was going to this sparkling cathedral, but he understood the appeal. The store was so clean, so orderly and full of promise.

Eddie even walked in, once, feeling gross in the clothes his mother paid for, but taking the smallest comfort in the fact that no one looked twice at his presence because of it.

Richie must’ve looked so much more out of place, Eddie thought, with his ever-tangled hair and his walk, which still had the air of unsurety. The image brought a smile to his face, before it morphed into a grimace.

“Hello, sir, may I help you?” a sales clerk asked, kind eyed and clearly a bit worried at Eddie’s demeanor. 

“I don’t think so. Just window shopping,” said Eddie, forcing a polite smile. 

“We have a new shipment, if you’re interested. A collection from a jeweller in Maine,” she said, and Eddie’s ears perked up. Maine. That rang a bell. Maine was Richie’s home state.

“If you don’t mind me asking, which city in Maine?” Eddie asked, not totally knowing why he was asking.

“I’m not sure…” said the sales clerk, her eyebrow quirking a bit in worry, as if she could sense the eerie energy in Eddie’s mind. “Derry, I think?” 

“Hmm. Weird,” said Eddie, shaking his head a bit. He must’ve been going crazy, he thought. This couldn’t mean anything, Eddie wasn’t the type to accept omens like _that_. Was it even an omen? 

“Would you like to see the pieces?” she asked tentatively. 

“Yes.”

-

That afternoon, Eddie walked out of Tiffany’s with a massive dent in his secret bank account and a gorgeous pair of rings weighing down his inside coat pocket. Some intrinsic warmth in the metal bands seeped through his fabric and all of his defenses, creeping into his skin until his blood was pounding with heat and happiness/terror. Ever telephone booth seemed somehow bigger and more obvious in his mind, as if screaming “reconnect with Richie” at him.

He knew, from a purely logical standpoint, that he couldn’t storm back into Richie’s life with these rings and all of his affection out in the open, but he needed Richie’s voice in his life in the way that he needed air and water.

Eddie shook his head and tried to grasp for reality: he just spent a fortune on a man who’d never love him back, and no amount of sincerity and honest effort would change that Richie wasn’t going to feel the same way. No amount of phone calls on a whim and deep hugs would erase the things that held Richie back.

Richie was engaged, he harshly reminded himself. Eddie didn’t know a thing about Richie, not really. He was in love with a stranger, and the stranger was in love with a ghost.

But then, he felt the warmth again, like a lighthouse that he could always go back to. He felt the comfort of the future, of an impossible maybe on the horizon. There was a certain sort of bliss in hope, as blind and pigheaded as it was. The hope persisted, breaking against the gates of harsh truths and wriggling its way into Eddie’s mind, bringing a spring to his step and throwing down all of his defenses.

Richie had that effect, Eddie realized. He always worked his way around what Eddie thought was possible, showing a little bit more of the light every time they touched. Richie was hope, Eddie decided. With a memory of the kiss fresh in his mind, Eddie closed his eyes and let himself have hope.

-

That night was especially boisterous, with Eddie’s eyes flickering to the rings on his mantle amidst a constant parade of phone calls from his mom, relaying live updates about her meeting with “our publisher”. He split his attention between fielding these calls and cooking some new pasta dish, making for an idyllic night.

Then, a break from the norm: there was a distinct metallic ring, signalling that the intercom was being pressed. Eddie rushed across the hallway to let the message in, suspicion flitting about his face.

“H-hey, Eddie, right? Is this the right apartment?” asked a voice, one that Eddie vaguely recognized. There was the dinn from outside, like the bustle and chatter of a street outside.

“This is Eddie,” he said simply.

“It’s Bill. Me and Richie are locked outside… could you help us out? Richie’s kind of losing his mind out here,” said Bill, and Eddie’s mind flashed with realizations, that this was _Bill_ , his unnecessarily pleasant romantic rival, and that of all the people they could call…

“Do you just need me to buzz you in?” 

“Yeah, yeah. That’s all we need. Unless you- um…”

“What?” Eddie asked. 

“It might be nice if you hung out. Nothing too formal, just… Richie’s been kind of cut off from social life, no matter how hard I try, and he misses you,” said Bill, and Eddie had a heart attack on his side of the line. Richie missed him? What if- no time for what ifs, he thought.

“I can bring some food,” said Eddie. 

“That would be perfect,” said Bill, and Eddie had a moment of affection for him, for his ability to be such a good guy. Without much ado, Eddie let him in the building, before darting over to the kitchen to pour some of his pasta and sauce into a spare container. With a bit too much energy, he left his apartment, slipping down the stairs with his food nearly spilling over the rim of his bowl. 

An image of the rings burned in his mind, a picture of optimism despite the reality that was trying to snake its way through him. He arrived at Richie’s door just as the pair was walking up the stairs, in full party regalia: Richie has a plastic tiara perched on his unruly curls, sparkling beneath the flickering hallway lights. Bill held a pile of mail. At Eddie’s confused glance, he held it up in explanation.

“Richie was too busy with the keys to grab it,” said Bill, and Richie had begun to work on the door. Eddie had a moment of unease, of worry over the fact that Richie hadn’t even greeted him yet. Then the door was open and the party moved inside.

“I brought some food, as requested,” said Eddie, and Bill politely pulled it out of his hands, setting it on the table next to the foreboding pile of mail. Eddie’s eyes drifted to Richie, pouring himself a glass of water. Then, Richie looked back, making fatal eye contact with Eddie.

“Hey Eds,” he said. His voice was quiet and sincere, and Eddie damn near melted on the spot.

“What’d you make?” Bill asked, ruining the moment with pure innocence.

“Rigatoni with some cream sauce. Saw it in a magazine,” said Eddie, his voice blank as his eyes tracked Richie as he moved to the table and begun sifting through the mail with a vapid gaze.

Bill had begun to talk, his voice providing a pleasant enough soundtrack as Richie’s movements slowed, his focus honing on a single envelope. With a barely noticeable tremor in his hands, he delicately opened the lip of the envelope, a move so uncharacteristic of Richie Tozier that fear begin to swim around Eddie’s mind. The letter was pulled out with a painstaking care. Richie read the first line, and his eyes widened. In the back of Eddie’s mind, he could hear Bill’s monologue slowly taper off.

“Darling, what is it?” Bill asked, and Richie was _shaking_ as he reached for his water, a whimper trapped in his throat.

“Is it Stan?” Eddie asked, and something in his name snapped something in Richie, because soon the glass of water went flying, narrowly missing Eddie’s shoulder before smashing on the floor, shattering into shards and splinters.

“No, no, no no no no NO!” said Richie, not in response to his question as he stood up and advancing towards Eddie, looking absolutely animalistic in his despair. Behind him, Bill picked up the letter and skimmed it, before locking eyes with Eddie and nodding. 

“Richie, I’m sorry that-” began Eddie, interrupted by Richie desperately pushing past him and down the hall. Eddie could hear the crunch of Richie’s shoes, still on his feet, on the glass that was spattered around the floor, and he winced at the scene. Eddie cautiously followed Richie into the bedroom, where he was no longer able to form words.

Some inhuman noise of grief ripped out of Richie’s lungs, and Eddie hung by the door, where Bill joined him. There was no helping it- Richie was flailing, losing any sense of decorum or propriety that New York had tried to drill into him. Something was thrown at the mirror, something was grabbed and ripped about.

“Stan’s last week of deployment. Shot in the stomach, bled out,” muttered Bill behind him, and Eddie could only watch Richie, looking like a comet bursting with energy, just on the verge of a burnout.

A pillow was torn, releasing flurries of feathers into the air as Richie’s body slowed down until collapsing on the bed, his thin body totally overtaken by sobs. The feathers looked like snow, covering his shaking body and the floor, looking quite like a Derry Maine winter...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i knowwww the next chapter is gonna be an epic flashbck where I spill all the beans about Richie and Stan's past,, so get hyped for that. pls comment it's my life source as an author. love y'all sorry for the kinda-cliffhanger

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading the first chapter! I’m debating whether or not I should continue with this, so please comment if you’re interested in it and want to see more of this universe.
> 
> All credits to @takealottodragmeawayfromreddie, this was their awesome idea.


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